On April 18, the Administrative Vice Principals (AVPs) Amy Hanson and Charles Velschow are hosting a Community Service Campus Clean-Up to help students clear their detentions and get off the no-privilege list.
Students can get on the no-privilege list for several reasons. One, and the most common, is not serving your detention within the first 5 days of receiving it. The other is fines, which could be from not turning in library books or textbooks, parking where you aren’t supposed to and other circumstances. This event will help tackle numerous detentions and get a step closer to students being able to participate in school activities like sports or dances.
“With the expectation of holidays, we try to do community clean-ups every first Saturday of every month,” Velshow said. “[The event is] from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.; sometimes it can go a little bit shorter than that, depending upon how hard the kids work.”
The event’s primary goal is only to serve detentions, rather than students with no detentions gaining community service hours.
“I try to dissuade kids from coming to this event if they only have one to two detentions,” Velshow said. “It’s easier to just come to the multi-use room (MUR) after school. If kids want community service hours, it’s better to go through the Octagon Club or just to work with Ms. Hanson’s office, because she handles all of the community service.”
The most common way to serve a detention is to spend an hour in the MUR after school. That option is offered every school day.
“The reason we wanted to do the Campus Clean-Up event was to present options for students,” Velschow said. “We want to hold accountability but also be flexible and give them alternatives in terms of what they can do, so they can serve their repercussions.”
The event is around 6 hours long, but varies depending on how fast and efficiently the students work.
“The primary task we have is to pick up trash,” Veschow said. “We provide several buckets and grabbers for the job.”
This event has many benefits for students and for the campus. According to a Brigham Young University study, “Cleanliness ranked as the fourth most important building element to impact the students’ personal learning.”
“[Some of the pros of this event were that it] lowered the number of students on the no-privileges list,” Velschow said. “A lot of studies have shown, time and time again, that a clean, well-kept physical campus does help with learning, so by participating in this event, they are making a difference for every student at Woodside.”
