Head Monitors on a New Year
By MAX LITVAK ‘20
With a new year comes new leaders, and with these new leaders comes a whole realm of new possibilities. Our new head monitors, Asia Chung ‘19 and Mikey George ‘19, have a lot planned for the upcoming school year. In their convocation speeches last Wednesday, both emphasized the idea of entering high school with a clean slate. In Asia’s words, “the school year is really what you make of it.” Mikey elaborated on this idea—noting that this new year brings a chance to change, step out of your comfort zone, and try something new. In his speech, he urged the student body to “hang out with new people, join a different club, adopt a new character trait.”
Besides setting the atmosphere for the year, Mikey and Asia used their speeches to outline some specific goals. Their main priorities are promoting mental health awareness and bridging the gap between upperclassmen and underclassmen. Although almost every speech given by a class rep or head monitor has touched on these topics, Asia and Mikey aim to finally change things.
Up until last year there were very few student-led school-wide discussions about mental health. Former head monitors Kailee Silver ‘18 and Greg Livingston ‘18 made a point of addressing the issue; they brought in outside speakers and generally promoted discussions about the importance of mental health awareness. In my interview with Mikey, he said he and Asia intend “to continue where Kailee and Greg left off last year, rather than pave a new road.”
Mikey also mentioned that the SGA plans to prioritize gratitude this year because between classes, clubs, and sports, there is hardly any time in the Milton schedule to stop and appreciate all the good in our lives. Asia said in her speech, “don’t bring yourself down. Sometimes, our greatest enemy is ourselves, and we have the tendency to overthink things and convince ourselves that maybe we shouldn't even be here.” As she explained, sometimes unexpected things happen, but you need to be flexible because most things “work out in the end.”
Our head monitors are ready to tackle what Asia called the “looming concern”—bridging the gap between upper and lower classmen. Bridging this gap is definitely a hard task to accomplish, especially, as Asia explained, taking into account the “literal, physical divide” between upper and lower classmen: the different spaces of the stu. There is a clear hierarchy; a freshman wouldn’t dare sit at an upstairs table, and only the bravest sophomore would ever muster the courage to sit on a upstairs couch. Instead of trying to fix this problem immediately, Asia and Mikey plan to take smaller steps. Their first step, Asia said, is just “sitting with the underclassmen at lunch sometimes.” She also wants all underclassmen to know that they are welcome to talk with her and Mikey about anything: an issue with a teacher, friends, whatever is on their minds.
In addition to promoting mental health awareness and working on bridging the gap between upper and underclassmen, Asia and Mikey have other specific plans. According to Asia, they want to work with both the boarding and day monitors on certain issues. They will be will be working with the boarding monitors to review the in-room-visitation policy and working with the day monitors to review the late policy; all day students know what it’s like to come to school a couple minutes late because of traffic and get a cut.
From building a positive atmosphere of openness to raising mental health awareness, our new head monitors, Asia and Mikey, have lots of plans for this year. Although both are very determined to make change, Asia notes that “change isn’t always as instantaneous as we would like, and, if these policies are successfully reviewed, we may not see change until the upcoming years.” However, in Mikey’s words, they, as head monitors, “do not want another SGA deemed ineffective for investing months of work into a concept that was never realized.” Armed with plans and ideas, Mikey and Asia are ready to lead our school through the 2018-2019 year.