November 17, 2022 Assemblies, cont.

The traditional assemblies, like the National Coming Out Day Assembly and the Hispanic Heritage Month Assembly, are meant to coordinate with the theme of the month or day they take place on. Others, such as the Halloween Assembly, Holiday Assembly and Earth Day Assembly celebrate holidays.

Out Day Assembly was led by the GSA, and the Hispanic Heritage Month Assembly was led by Latinos Unidos.

“I feel like a lot of the clubs do a really good job getting a good balance of people to speak at the assemblies,” Labatt said.

In those cases, the club does the bulk of the assembly planning. “For the Hispanic Heritage Month [Assembly], Latinos Unidos pretty much owned it from beginning to end,” Ferrell said.

Ferrell still sees room for improvement in assembly diversity.

“Assemblies provide us a big platform to inform our community members about current issues. For example, I thought we could do [...] something on Native Americans in November, because I feel like that’s a demographic that's overlooked a lot,” Ferrell said.

said. “However, certain assemblies carry a more serious tone like the Mental Health at Menlo one or the [...] Veterans Day Assembly.” According to Ferrell, attendance levels have improved since the beginning of the year, as faculty have begun patrolling the parking lot to prevent students’ cars from leaving campus.

For Ferrell and Labatt, it is important to find a balance between keeping assemblies fun and engaging for students while also addressing important messages. “We don’t want to bring speakers unless there's something that we’re super passionate about,” Labatt said. “We try to mix it up, and have fun ones like Halloween in between more serious assemblies.”

Despite efforts to engage students, Ferrell noticed a dropoff in attendance at the past few assemblies as some students left campus. “I think you can’t make everybody happy, [...] but we’re really trying to make them fun,” Ferrell