Wellness survey assembly prompts further student skepticism
December 1, 2018
Following an all-school assembly Nov. 29 to debrief the results of the health and wellness survey, students have expressed further skepticism around the presentation and availability of survey data.
At the assembly, Title IX Coordinator Betsy Noel gave a presentation on survey result topics including stress, sexual activity, drug use and bullying.
During a question and answer portion of the assembly, some students expressed skepticism around the inclusion of national averages in the presentation and the lack of information shared around sexual misconduct results.
Freshman Zuzie Jenkins asked a question at the assembly regarding the choice to not share results around sexual assault and harassment, while still including results around self-harm and suicide.
“I thought the administration had good intentions, but executed poorly. If Lab is going to censor one sensitive topic, they must censor all,” Zuzie said.
In response to Zuzie’s question at the assembly, Ms. Noel explained, “We will release the information about sexual assault in an appropriate way. We don’t put information in a way that is sensitive to someone’s experience. We don’t want people to look around the room to try and figure out who answered what.”
Principal Stephanie Weber ended the assembly with a statement outlining the next steps for the survey data.
“We are going to have focus groups that will begin to meet in January. The focus groups will be used to better understand responses and for students to ask questions for future recommendations. There will be another survey with rephrased questions along with new ones,” Ms. Weber said.
