In a significant change to the weekday chapel program, next year, prefects from all religious services will assist in running morning chapel. In addition, the voting   for the Class of 2018’s House and Senior Prefects took place a month earlier than normal, with the positions announced on April 28th.

Fifth formers applying to serve as prefects for religious or spiritual organizations were informed recently that prefect duties will change for the 2017-18 school year. Chapel Prefects, who had previously been responsible for both weekend and weekday chapel services, will share responsibility for the latter with prefects of other religious campus organizations; Chapel, sangha, Jewish student life, Muslim and Catholic prefects alike will take attendance and give readings for weekday chapel services – the weekend Episcopal service, though, will remain solely for Chapel Prefects.

This change was proposed by Groton’s religious and spiritual leaders – Christopher Whiteman, Monika Andersson, David Nelson, Shua Arshad, and Fanny Vera de Viacava. Since weekday chapel is intended as a non-denominational service, Reverend Whiteman explained, “all our traditions should be able to participate and offer various perspectives and expand upon material that is meaningful to them such as readings or hymns… I believe that the more voices that get involved in the spiritual life, the stronger we are.” Ms. Andersson, who leads the Buddhist-Hindu sangha, agrees with the changes: “We shouldn’t be separatist when it comes to matters of faith because we’re all spiritual people. I think the change will be very positive in the sense that we can be spiritual together no matter what religion we are.”

Some students support the change. Noelia Carbajal ‘18, who plans to apply for the Catholic mass prefect position praised the revised program: “I think it is an important opportunity for a diverse community to come together and share their own unique perspectives.” Others, however, are hesitant – Rand Hough ‘17 argues that the school’s affiliation with Episcopalianism is “a foregone conclusion.” He says that “in scrubbing part of the church’s role from our school, we are removing a small part of our identity.”

In the realm of school leaders, the change was more temporal in nature. The current Fifth Form participated in two form-wide votes on the 27th and 28th of April to determine the senior and house prefects for next year, about a month earlier than usual. Results were announced the immediately following Saturday. The Form of 2018 elected Malik Gaye and Elechi Egwuekwe ‘18 as their senior prefects, and Maggie Cheever and Richie Santry ‘18 as their house prefects.

Dean of Students Michael O’Donnell says that this change is primarily designed to benefit rising sixth formers. “One of the challenges of electing senior prefects later on,” he said, “was that if those who are elected have expressed interest in and stepped up to apply for a various other positions, then they are left to make the hard decision of having to choose between trying them all or giving up a position that they are interested in.” Moreover, the current senior and house prefects believes that they would have benefitted from meeting with their own predecessors.

For elected senior and house prefects, the change is not significant. For those who seek to be religious or spiritual prefects, however, these modifications represent a significant change in the positions.