Student Spotlight: Duncan Holditch

You may remember several weeks ago when a student named Duncan Holditch went up in town hall to spread awareness for his petition to alter the schools schedule, specifically by relocating the five minutes from the ten minute break on Wednesdays to either the start of the day or to the start of lunch. Duncan first described this break as “seemingly pointless” and “unnecessary” and decided that it was time someone did something about it. So during town hall on Monday, September 11th he brought this issue forward to the student body. It was met with a lot of applause (a lot even for Springs students). But what has happened since then? What steps has Duncan taken to bring this to the administration? And is the issue more complicated than it might seem? To answer all these questions and more, I interviewed Duncan Holditch and he gave me an update.

Duncan is a sophomore and has attended Indian Springs since his eighth grade year. He is a member of the choir and enjoys tofu. Duncan stated that he found most aspects of the schedules from previous years intuitive, however he disliked some of the changes made to the schedule this year (most notably, of course, the ten minute break). Duncan was not the only one who felt this way, many others agreed with him so he decided to create his petition. The turnout on the petition was great. Two hundred and twenty seven people responded to his Google form, of those responses; most said that they would rather the five minutes be allocated to the beginning of the day so that school would start at nine o’clock on Wednesdays instead of eight fifty five. Duncan himself preferred the option of moving the five minutes to the start of lunch; he said that it would make it easier for those in choir to eat lunch.

With a majority of the student bodies votes secured Duncan took the petition to student government at their next meeting. StudGov reacted by unanimously voting to move the vote forward to the faculty. With that done, Duncan then spoke to Dr. Gray, who told him that it would be discussed at the next faculty meeting on Wednesday, September 20th. “It was a nice conversation, he was pretty reasonable” - Duncan Holditch on his meeting with Dr Gray.

All in all, this has been a great example of how petitioning the government should work. Both sides acted in a respectful manner and worked to understand each other. The most probable outcome, in Duncan's opinion, is that the five minutes will be moved to the beginning of lunch because it works better for the administration. All of us who like more consistent schedules owe Duncan our thanks, and he ended the interview by saying that he intended to run for mayor at some point in the future.

Sources cited:

Duncan Holditch