Mission & Vision
Back in December of 2017, I received an odd-looking envelope from my former boarding school, Lawrenceville. In it, a letter detailed “the school’s efforts to bring to light any reports of adult-student sexual misconduct, past or present.” This came after allegations regarding sexual assault surfaced against a former teacher and housemaster who worked at the institution back in the ’80s. The letter seemed intriguing to me, the school was openly acknowledging and actively working at fixing an issue as serious and severe as teacher-student sexual misconduct. The school made sure the entire alumni network knew of this, and in doing so sent out a strong message of care and justice.
The first thing that came to me while reading the letter was ASFM, the school I grew up in and where I would eventually graduate from high school. I couldn’t help but think that in regards to image, ASFM and Lawrenceville were complete opposites. I thought about what ASFM would do if it were found in a situation similar to that of Lawrenceville, then I remembered the school firing a teacher who had been caught dealing illegal substances to students a couple of years back. The teacher was unsurprisingly fired, yet admin failed to openly communicate with the ASFM community about the situation. With no parents or students being notified. More recently, a security guard who had been working at the school for the better part of a lifetime was let go. The school remains silent as to the reason(s) why, leaving the ASFM community with no other option than to speculate.
These are not the only two ASFM employees to leave mid school year with no explanation, and far more troubling than these couple of bad apples in an otherwise gorgeous tree, is the lack of communication coming from the school administration.
I came to my conclusion that ASFM’s biggest concern as an institution was to look good rather than be good. While this thought first came to me in December of 2017 as I read that letter, it has only amplified in the years since.
My three-year tenure at El 107 taught me a lot of things, but one of my biggest takeaways has been, what I think of as, a fundamental flaw in the way ASFM is administered. While writing articles, shooting videos, and even taking pictures, the question that arose was always “how will this make the school look?” rather than “is this a good piece?”. Things like us consciously not reporting on teachers leaving, deciding to take down the BLUE-GATE miniseries, and heavily modifying articles like The Talk We Never Had (opinion piece on sexual harassment) and One Step Ahead (investigative piece about classroom renovations) often make me weary.
The more I experienced high school the clearer this problem became. The school should stop focusing on whether or not the Multimedios Production Studio makes for good pictures on their website and instead focus on whether or not it acts as a good production studio for its students. (Something, that as one of the people who is constantly using the area, I can very confidently say it doesn’t). This sense of disconnect is felt throughout the entire school, with administrators being blinded to student complaints, just look at how long it took for our bathrooms to finally be fixed.
Examples of this are plentiful, but my goal is not to point fingers or even complain about the state of things. Just like I can be a proud Mexican while criticizing certain aspects of my government, I can point out flaws in the school administration. Not because I want to see my country fail, or school collapse, but because I want them both to get better. As I transition from student to alumni I’m already feeling more nostalgic and attached to this institution than ever before, and I know that I will continue to be a proud eagle for the rest of my life. What I want most of all is for my homeschool to become the best version of itself, and my biggest fear is to attend ASFM’s 100th anniversary (in a short nine years) and be completely infatuated with the façade of the school. To fall in the trap of the image and fail to see and understand the actual experience of its students.
TLDR: The only way for all Eagles to be happy is for improved communication between the administration and the ASFM community at large.
More about Lawrenceville’s 2017 case: