St. Luke’s School
377 North Wilton Road - New Canaan, CT - 06840
October 2011
From the Oval Locker Kelly Seaver Student Government President
The new space in all it’s glory. To the left, CFL head Jim Foley is pictured teaching in the global classroom.
A New Space For A New Year
Caroline Hopkins Contributing Writer
It’s what you’ve waited for all summer, SLS. The one and only “New Space” has finally arrived! The building project that had our hilltop crawling with construction crews for three months this summer has drastically exceeded the expectations of students and faculty alike. I believe I speak on behalf of the entire Saint Luke’s community when I say that I was genuinely amazed upon entering the building on the first day of class. Everywhere I turned there was something new - cafeteria carpeting, elegant wooden tables, a working fireplace, rainbow bathrooms- it was like I was a little kid on Christmas morning. Now a month into school, I am still discovering new and outstanding features in the space, and find that I look forward to school if simply for the enjoyment of relishing in the new environment. (I have actually declined several invitations to go off campus for the sole purpose of enjoying my free periods by the fireplace) Recently, I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to speak with the architect who designed the new space, James Rogers. During a brief twenty minute conversation, I discovered an extraordinary amount about the space’s design and features, not to mention the extent of effort and hard work that the school, partnered with Turner Construction, underwent in creating the space. My initial question to Mr. Rogers was one that many of you may have likely wondered about. What was the goal in embarking on this construction project? Simply put, why the new space? As many of us know, our school takes pride in its sense of community. We are an remarkably unified student body, and thus it is only fitting that we spend our school days in a unified environment. As
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Mr. Rogers explained to me, the goal of the project was to combine the student commons with the cafeteria, creating a unified center of community that would give the school character. The idea to create the Center for Leadership and Global Classroom came later on in the project, when, in considering the possibility of extending the ceiling of the dining commons another story, Mr. Rogers envisioned a second story classroom with a transparent, visual connection with the space below. The space’s design, brilliant in and of itself, was perfectly executed with over 3500 total hours of labor. Upon hearing this statistic, my jaw nearly dropped; it’s easy to forget that this great new environment did not simply appear as we walked through the front doors on the first day of school. Not only was this project highly labor intensive, but it also posed many challenges to the workers involved in its creation. Combining the sixth grade hallway with the history wing, for instance, required the construction workers to essentially mine their way through a preexisting foundation as well as an underground staircase of unknown origin. The exquisite zig-zag design of the glass within the global classroom, moreover, was actually constructed as a solution to a problem involving the acoustics in the global classroom. Mr. Rogers explained to me that, if the glass were to have been constructed in a curved formation, the room would actually echo, as the speaker’s voice would resonate directly back to them. This piece of information I found particularly interesting, as my assumption had simply been that the school wanted to give the Global Classroom an aesthetic appeal. Ultimately, I found the most compelling feature of the New Space to be its complete devotion to “going green,” a process that involves
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An authority figure is essentially a person who has the power and mental astuteness to tell others what to do. I, on the other hand, am currently lacking both qualifications and so instead would like to divert your attention to those goals I think are most appropriate for the upcoming year. Or rather, for however long it takes to transform this governmental system into some semblance of a dictatorship. While we wait for the official takeover, however, I think it is important we establish our aspirations for the next several months to come. One of my top priorities of the year- alongside the measly concern of getting into college and managing to graduate in one piece- is to prove that the senior class, and the 2011- 2012 upper school as a whole, can act as a hybrid of both the spirit class and respect class (something that has been a struggle in the past). But what exactly does that entail? Essentially, in its most basic form, we harness that excess ra-ra energy and channel it into caring for the school community around us- especially in keeping the new space looking pristine for the entirety of the year. As a student body, we can unleash our dual personality: think chest-painted super fans by night and caring, respect-mo-biles by day. Even further, another objective is to work to encompass spirit not just at sports games, but
Our lady Madame President
also in our overarching pride for our school and all it has to offer. From concerts, to clubs, to plays, to games, to dances, the more fans and enthusiasm surrounding them, the more enjoyable they’ll be. Finally, we must maintain that golden rule that people so often neglect, albeit usually without meaning to. It is essential that we really do treat the school (and our fellow students and teachers) as we would like to be treated. We have to keep in mind that everybody has bad days, but it does not give us the right to forget how we should act as members of this community. But more than anything else, integrity is the name of the game. For student government as
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U of SLS