Common spaces, a space that benefits us all. Somewhere calm and safe were we as students can gather in between, after, or during classes. As a Junior here at Roosevelt, I’ve seen our school go through many changes in three short years. In my freshmen year the common spaces were open, relaxing, and community oriented areas where we were free to do anything from school work to eating lunch. But bit by bit I’ve watched the common spaces be taken away, why is this? Is it just due to skipping? And if it is, is the solution taking away common spaces for everyone? and maybe most importantly, does it even stop skipping? Let’s talk about it.
The issue I find with the commons is that it is currently working around the “guilty by association” system. Guilty by association is when a group is punished because it is associated with certain people, behaviors, or situations. In some cases this can be productive, for example having to leave our bags outside Fredmeyers to prevent stealing. But in my opinion when it comes to community oriented spaces that are supposed to promote individualized learning, making it inaccessible to people with permission sends out a message of exclusion.
Working in the common areas feels as though I’m doing something wrong or bad, other students feel similarly quoting “even when I’m allowed to be there, I get yelled at. It’s unmotivating and stressful.”.
The reason this all is happening is blatantly obvious, skipping. This is an issue our school and staff have been trying to combat for a while now. The logic seems very straightforward, if the areas skipping most frequently occurs are more monitored then there should be less skipping, right? Well, sort of, yes it is true that there are now less people in the commons during class time, it doesn’t mean skipping has stopped. Another student states “yeah if i get kicked out from there i dont go back to class most of the time. I just walk around or go to the bathroom or something.”. Of course our staff can only do so much and can’t force a student to be in class, but why berate those who do have permission to be there? Is it worth making students feel stressed, aggravated, or even unwelcomed?
I was able to have a short conversation with Ms. Henashian who is a school Climate Specialist for our school. Her job as a Climate Specialisti to keep the energy within the school up and productive. She also stated that a part of her job is reminding students in the hall or common spaces to go back to class, she spoke on the difficulties of coming up with solutions for skipping within the commons. She doesn’t think it’s fair to those that have permission to work there to be moved into a separate space. But on the same note they can’t just allow people to skip, make a mess of, and crowd a common space during class time, and I can see the difficulty within these choices and decisions staff has to make.
The article you read now isn’t the first common space article a Voices of Roosevelt member has written, it’s actually not even the second. In April of last year Audrieauna Brown wrote two articles on this exact topic, one article on the student perspective and a pairing article for the staff one. Both of these articles were beautifully written and a great help when it came to research for the article before you.
