let's chuck some frosh out the window

From the Courier and Press, Signature School space tight:

Space is so tight at Signature School that officials may have to cap enrollment at about 275 next year.

A lottery may be used to determine which new students will be accepted next school year.

This fall, the school has 242 students, Principal Vicki Snyder told the Signature Governance Board on Wednesday, "and some of our rooms are pretty crowded."

Space indeed can be tight at Sig. Whereas last year I had 4 classes with less than 10 people, this year my only small class is Oral Interp (12). Classes are getting larger and some are reaching capacity.

This is, of course, the Freshmen's fault.

After all, they take the elevator from the 3rd floor to the lobby for lunch. Why wouldn't they be the source of the population problem at Sig? Really, there are 74 freshmen, making them the largest class and almost twice as large as the Senior class.

But our "let's blame the Freshmen" mentality is, in this case, unwarranted. Freshmen only crowd freshmen classes (well, some Freshmen have classes with upperclassmen, but not very many), and the only other time I consider Freshmen to be a waste of space is on the elevators and during lunch in the Loft.

Along with their numbers, Freshmen have brought a vitality to Sig unseen since the Class of '03. Yeah, they are rowdy and hyperactive. But so was my class as Freshmen, although our smaller numbers resulted in much less hyperactivity in all. The Freshmen don't seem to be the devoted scholars of the pre-IB era. But that's not a definitively negative quality. The Freshmen will leave their mark on Signature by the time they graduate. Signature will be radically changed in four years--for the better or for the worse, I can't say--but Signature pride and vitality will be carried on and perhaps increased.

And for that I am willing to endure the crowded elevators.