Brendan Schlitt ‘24 | Connor Shanahan ‘24
Student Council is planning a Lawn Day for the Upper School on Reading Day on May 13th. The goal of the event is to alleviate any stress that students may have due to final exams.
According to Andrea Yu, Upper School Librarian and Faculty Advisor of Student Council, the Lawn Day will take place on the football field, and there will be many activities, including yard games, such as “Connect 4, Jenga, Cornhole,” and possibly “a dunk tank to have classes taking turns dunking certain teachers or form deans.” Student Council member Sophia Hu ‘24 elaborates on the details surrounding the event, “On Reading Day, at noon, the food trucks are going to come in, and there is going to be Lawn Day for the school with a bunch of activities on the lawn to do, and you can also get food from food trucks.” Yu states that there will be “several food trucks coming through,” including “an ice cream truck, the Philly Waffle Cabin, and the Pizza Wagon.”
Photo courtesy of Kathleen Mark ‘21
Yu explains that she planned the event because she “thought that reading day might be a good opportunity to do some type of ‘lawn day’ for our students, so students would still have the opportunity to come in the morning to get some help from teachers but then maybe in the afternoon let off some steam.”
According to Head of Upper School Michael Letts, “The event coincides as well with a number of our teams who are at both Agnes Irwin and Haverford that day. The idea was that for those who want to go, we will have buses that can take you over to the games, so that you can support your classmates, and hopefully, it’s sort of like another Spirit Day.” Co-President of the Sophomore Class Fernando Loor ‘24 discusses the various sporting events taking place during Lawn Day, saying, “I think that there is going to be baseball, lacrosse, and softball.”
Many students are thrilled about this event, including Rohan Sivakumar ‘24, who believes, “Right now I feel valued, because Student Council is attempting to lighten up a very monotonous, very mundane, very drab day of studying.” He continues, “I think that this sort of decision to include these activities and field games is really going to bring the students, who are huddled in their rooms late into the night, out of the darkness and into the light.” Similarly, Logan Schlitt ‘23 feels, “It is a good way to bring students together and show some school spirit before everyone goes their separate ways in the summer.” Although the idea is well-appreciated, some students, such as Anjali Malickel Ramakrishnan ‘24, will not participate. “I’ll probably go home and just study, so the event is not helpful,” she states.
Yu shares the inspiration for Lawn Day, saying, “We were trying to look for opportunities to bring back more of the fun social activities that I feel like EA had a lot more of pre-pandemic. The pandemic has slowed a lot of things down and made it difficult to gather and host things on campus. So, now that the landscape is changing, one of the things we definitely want to bring back is more social events and possibly an all-school social event.” She believes Lawn Day will give students a sense of normalcy by stating, “I just want to give our kids some semblance of normalcy, some semblance of fun. This has not been a usual high school experience for anyone, so we are hoping this could be another return to some of the more enjoyable experiences that EA has to offer.” Echoing Yu’s statement, Letts says, “Everyone has given up a lot of fun the last couple of years, so maybe we can get some of that back.”