Students First?

The average day of a Stuyvesant student-athlete looks something like this: she attends a three-hour practice after all her classes, leaving school after dark and arriving home at eight. Sweaty, hungry, and exhausted, she starts her homework in preparation for the next day. Assuming the student is taking only the minimum six academic classes—not including any APs—and that her teachers adhere to the homework policy (30 minutes of homework per class), she has three hours of homework. Accounting for an hour to eat and bathe, she goes to bed at midnight at the earliest. She wakes up at six the next morning to make it to her first period class.

The push by the Student Union (SU) to grant PSAL athletes gym frees, which are intended to lessen some of this burden at home, was recently shut down by the School Leadership Team (SLT). SLT members and physical education (P.E.) teachers cited logistical issues. Additionally, they said that the PSAL free proposal was disrespectful toward the P.E. department, and that P.E. classes teach life skills and fitness habits. In a vote divided between staff and students, staff resolved to cease all discussion on the issue. They suggested that if students found it difficult to balance academics and athletics, they should simply quit the latter.

This issue calls us to introspect: Are we students first? According to the administration, we are students first, to the extent that we should sacrifice our identities or our mental health to prioritize academics. According to the student body, we understand that our lives outside of the classroom are often more important in defining who we are and how we decide our time.

Here’s the thing—the administration seems to be conveniently forgetting what they boast about Stuyvesant students, which is that we are talented and dedicated inside and outside of the classroom. Every fall and spring, students and administration alike highlight the fact that Stuyvesant students excel in academics AND athletics, debate, writing, and the arts. The new “just quit if you can’t handle it” response blatantly negates the image of Stuyvesant as an environment that fosters the well-roundedness we project.

The decision to shut down the PSAL proposal, then, has much greater implications. It indicates to us that administrative support for student mental health is shallow. Athletes are certainly not the only subgroup of students who could benefit from an extra 41 minutes every other day in order to complete their schoolwork. All students deserve to feel that the administration supports their efforts in balancing their academic and extracurricular endeavors, and to hear that the school would rather have its students quit their activities accommodate them is discouraging.

Stuyvesant’s biannual Open Houses flaunt the school’s 32 teams and 122 clubs. However, providing these opportunities for students to involve themselves in their school community is meaningless without institutional support for academic-extracurricular balance. If Stuyvesant is going to have all these non-academic activities, the administration should assume that students will participate and venture in these different interests, and should aim to accommodate them.

The administration’s cheapening stance towards the SU is just another example of a lack of practical respect for student activities—it is the job of SU leaders to propose policies that will benefit the student body, and considering the amount of work put into the proposal (two years of work, culminating in an official proposal that addressed logistical concerns), the outrage of student representatives over the SLT decision is understandable. For the adults in this building to dismiss their efforts is unacceptable.

There is, as a rule, a lack of compromise between the student body and administration. Principal Contreras claims to seek out solutions that work for all sides of the Stuyvesant community, but when it came to an issue unpopular with the staff, he backed a complete shutdown of the student body. According to Contreras, he left the option to continue discussion up to a vote because he cares about running the school democratically, but the committee that voted on this issue vastly overrepresented teachers and staff. Out of 17 members, only three of them were students.

The PSAL issue is a question of where the school’s priorities lie. We are talking about the mental and physical health of 160 students compared to the personal offense of 12 physical education teachers.

As the leader of the SLT, Principal Contreras has the power to reopen the conversation on PSAL frees and overrule the board’s decision. If his goals are truly to fairly represent the constituents of the Stuyvesant community, to protect the mental and physical health of his students, and to encourage well-rounded students, he should reopen the question of PSAL frees in a committee that fairly represents student athletes, coaches, and P.E. teachers. The goal is a fair compromise, not a shutdown.

The following proposal for a new solution to the PSAL issue is sourced from coaches and student athletes in collaboration:

As of now, Students can submit ZQT10 forms to get a 10th period P.E. class for athletes to begin their practice early. In this plan, instead of replacing P.E. classes with a free, student athletes could be programmed into a tenth period gym class taught by a coach, who would take them to the pier for practice or run their workouts in school. Athletes would be able to gain another free during the day while still being enrolled in and attending a P.E. class.

Additional propositions for compromise are to extend this option only to upperclassmen and athletes who play two or more seasons.