Belleville Township High School East - Yearbook (Belleville, IL)

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LIFE iS BUT a ' 1 loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass. Now by the post-and-rail fences where the old stones thrown there, pick ' d from the fields, have accumulated, (Wild flowers and vines and weeds come up through the stones and partly cover them, beyond these I pass). Walt Whitman; LEAVES OF GRASS

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OPEN C DPU5 •. .many faculty members indicated on the faculty survey form that they felt that high school students still need much guidance and supervision in their daily lives, which is sort of a mother instinct to protect the poor student from the big bad world.... we do feel that many high school students have the responsibility to control their actions, and those that don’t need to learn how quickly, else their college years are going to give an extremely hard time.. . .. . A third argument raised in opposition to open campus is the possibility that special extracurricular activities such as music, art, etc., would suffer if open campus were instituted. The obvious answer here is that those people truly interested in the programs will stay and that those who may leave could not have been very interested in the program anyway, and as such would not have been able to contribute in the first place. A fourth argument made by opponents of open campus deals with the factor of time, and does have a legitimate basis. One hour does not provide an overwhelming amount of time for construc¬ tive action considering the distance of East from say, the Belleville Public Library, or the homes of students living in Fairview Heights. However, one must realize that this limited time does have the added advantage of a different and perhaps better location. For example, a half hour spent in the public library cac very easily be every bit as fruitful as an entire hour in the school library. A half hour at home can be every bit as good (if not better) as an hour watching films in P node. And so forth. ... The final argument raised against open campus is the most important, in pur opinion. Open campus, it has said, is an educationally undesirable, or educationally unsound policy. This is so supposedly because students, given the choice be¬ tween leaving and staying to take advantage of the educational facilities available (which is after all what the school is here for) will choose the former and leave. This may be true. How¬ ever, at the present time the students are not faced with the first alternative, and yet the majority still do not choose the second. If the new educational methods and facilities being planned right now are interesting enough, more students may take advantage of them, but if not, nothing will change. All - of which brings us back to the interest argument we used in analyzing the special music and art programs. It applies here, also. The students that are interested will remain. The students that aren ' t don ' t take advantage now and won ' t in the future. Which is as it should be. Students cannot be railroaded into learning. Encouraged, yes. Forced, no. .. .One of the arguments often offered in support of open cam¬ pus is that there is no place at East to study. Quite bluntly, this is untrue. If a student desires a place to study, he can find it. We have not yet run out of space. However, as we pointed out earlier, there may be places off campus of greater benefit to the students, even though the alloted timespace is much smaller. There may be a small advantage there. Secondly, there is an argument already partially discussed earlier, that being that students need to learn how to handle responsibility before they get the freedoms inherent in college. High school would seem to be place for for this learning pro¬ cess. It is obvioulsy the place most similar to the college format, and lessons learned in high school are most easily transferrable. How much responsibility would be learned from open campus is, of course, impossible to quantify, but it is an amount to be considered. A third advantage of open campus is one not immediately apparent. As was pointed out to us by the senior assistant principle at West, with the adoption of open campus, smoking no longer becomes a significant problem. Obviously, a stu¬ dent is not going to risk getting caught in the nodes when all he has to do is cross the street and smoke legally. As such, there will be no more hassle over smoking, and no more sus¬ pensions. Although this is only indirectly related to education, it is still an advantage. . . .. .In the course of our study, we have constantly met one dominant attitude on the part of open campus opponents. It runs something like this: Prove to me that open campus is educationally advantageous, and I ' ll accept it. In itself a valid argument. However, we feel that there is another side to this argument, a side equally as valid. This side views closed campus as a restriction on the natural movement of students. As such, closed campus (rather than open) is the exception to the norm, the change from the status quo. And as such, it should be justified. We do not feel that it is.. . (This investigation was conducted by a committee headed by Kevin Sandefur. The administration has not yet answered the recommendations that resulted. )

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Dtff AT AKBT” Bums And who art thou? said I to the soft-fall¬ ing shower. Which strange to tell, gave me an answer, as here translated: I am the Poem of the Earth, said the voice of the rain, Eternal I rise impalpable out of the land and the bottomless sea. Upward to heaven, whence, vaguely form ' d, al¬ together changed, and yet the same, I descend to lave the drouths, atomies, dust-layers of the globe. Soon shall the win¬ ter ' s foil be here; Soon shall these icy ligatures unbind and melt - - A little while. And air, soil, wave, suffused shall be in softness, bloom and growth -- a thousand forms shall rise From these dead clods and chills as from the low burial graves. Walt Whitman, LEAVES OF GRASS 25