On Monday, Oct. 27, students gathered in the high school gym to kick off GDS’ first “Day of Deliberation.” When kids began settling into the bleachers, however, a large patch of empty green seats in the rows to the left made something evident: Very few of the seniors were there. Thirty-one of them, to be precise.
The DEI office created the Day of Deliberation to spark civic engagement and inspire advocacy among GDS students. While students described the event as well-intentioned, they also cited its small turnout and unengaging topics as cause for concern. The program schedule featured rotating schedules for under- and upperclassmen and included large-group presentations as well as small-group activities.
The event was curated by the Close Up Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to the mobilization of young voices both within and outside political environments. According to its website, Close Up’s goal “is to inspire every person to find their voice and to help young people develop critical skills for tackling the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century.”
In an interview with the Bit, Assistant Head for Equity and Inclusion Marlo Thomas said the DEI office had experimented with a similar approach to discourse on a smaller scale last year. “We had a group of students, along with five other small groups of students from five different schools in the area, do a Day of Deliberation on a Saturday and it was well received by students who participated in that,” she said. “From that event and thinking about this year and helping to teach about the difference between deliberation and debate, we partnered with Close Up to do a full high school experience.”
Sante Mastriana, Close Up’s director of professional development and one of the leaders of the day’s programming, did not respond to requests for comment.
Following opening speeches from members of the DEI office and Close Up coordinators in the gym, ninth- and tenth-graders filed into classrooms in small groups to discuss the integration of AI into schools. Members of the GDS faculty engaged in these discussions with students. Juniors and seniors headed to the forum for a seminar on democracy and a workshop about media literacy; the two groups later switched places. At least four of the junior/senior small discussion groups had to merge with others when too few students showed up.
At 11:42 a.m., Assistant Principal for School Life Quinn Killy sent a school-wide email in which he stated that attendance at the event was mandatory. In the email, Killy said students would not be able to participate in after-school extracurricular activities if they had been marked absent.
“I think it’s a waste of time. I wish I didn’t go,” an upperclassman on the women’s varsity volleyball team, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so she could speak freely without facing disciplinary action, said. “The only reason I was there is because [Killy] emailed all the sports [teams] and said that if the sports teams didn’t show up we wouldn’t be able to play in our game.” Eleven of the 13 students the Bit interviewed said they disliked the way the day was approached.
Killy stressed the importance of programming days in an interview with the Bit. “I think there wasn’t enough clarity about the expectations, right? The expectations of being a student at GDS high school are that when we have all-school gatherings or high school programming days, the students are there,” he said. “They count just like any other school day does.”
Close Up senior program instructor Aidan Herrera also highlighted the value of deliberation for high schoolers. “You could have picked any range of issues and had similarly productive conversations, but I think the skill set of deliberation is quite important for young people to learn,” he said in an interview with the Bit. “I was expecting people to be excited about the fact that the school day looks a little bit different than normal.”
Killy discouraged parents from allowing their kids to skip programmed school days. “Parents shouldn’t be excusing their kids from classes on those days because they aren’t work days,” he said. “If you just want to go to a school where you can take classes and have that be it, go someplace else. Parents send their kids to this school not just to go to classes but because of all the other values of admission to this school. If that’s really why you’re here, then you should be at those things.”
While multiple students said they appreciated the concept of a round-table discussion, many expressed dissatisfaction with the conversation topic of AI. “I thought [the Day of Deliberation] was a good idea, but I didn’t think it was executed well,” sophomore Paul Sussmann said. “I think that being able to communicate across opinions is very important, and I don’t think anything we did would be very helpful, because we didn’t talk about anything controversial.”
According to Close Up civic fellow Olivia Francisco, who facilitated some of the small-group discussions, the foundation gave the school a list of potential topics to discuss, and the school chose AI. “Your school was interested, I believe, if I have this correct, in AI because it’s something that you’ve been talking about recently and they wanted to hear the students’ views on it,” Francisco said. “So we were allowing the students to discuss it amongst themselves, and that’s why the teachers were in here listening as well.” Francisco knew neither the topics up for discussion nor the individuals at GDS who chose them.
Sophomore Della Blum also said she would have appreciated a more compelling subject matter. “I’m not saying we should discuss Israel-Palestine, but somewhere in between the topic of AI and Israel-Palestine,” she said. “Something interesting enough, but where we’re not sent into ‘GDS war’ about it.”
“I think there is a lot of conflict between important and controversial,” Thomas said. “Students think that if it’s not controversial, it’s not important, and I think that’s an important [distinction] to understand.”
Thomas acknowledged that students appeared not to want to discuss anything that wasn’t prominent, in the news or a popular subject of debate. “We need to be able to engage in controversial conversations, but we also need to be able to engage in conversations that are complex and nuanced,” she said.
After lunch, the underclassmen engaged in a lecture titled “Youth Voices for Democracy,” which upperclassmen attended that morning. The session featured George Washington University junior Benjamin Solasky, who outlined his experience as the first student board member on his hometown Board of Education in Metuchen, New Jersey and encouraged students to make their voices heard.
Freshman Ari Klepper said he didn’t benefit from the afternoon programming. “I think the beginning part of the day, in the little groups with the AI, was helpful, but not the after-lunch part,” he said. SSC President senior Grace Khuzami similarly said she didn’t find the speaker and workshop meaningful.
The Bit counted 39 seniors of the class of 2026’s 137 students at the day’s closing assembly.
Multiple seniors cited looming early action application deadlines as the reason for their peers’ absence. Many universities have a Nov. 1 deadline for early applications. Like Killy, they also said there had been a lack of clarity about the event. “I think there was a lot of confusion about what the day was,” senior Rachel Sachs said.
“To the seniors, I want them to be a model of leadership for the ninth-, tenth- and eleventh-graders, and so it was disappointing that more seniors didn’t show up to fully engage and model and participate with their classmates,” Thomas continued. “[But] I can empathize with the stress of what it means to try and prepare for a Nov. 1 deadline.”
When asked whether absent students would face disciplinary action, Killy said they wouldn’t be reprimanded beyond typical absence policies. “Parents get an email saying, ‘Your child was absent from one or more classes today,’ and if the parent excuses [them], then there’s not much we can do about it,” he said.
Thomas said she wasn’t sure whether the DEI office would cement the Day of Deliberation as an annual practice. “Sometimes in trying things you can learn about whether it’s a match for us or whether we should not try it again next year,” Thomas said. “If it’s not felt as a valuable experience for [the students], we certainly don’t want to waste time, energy, effort and money.”
Molly Kurtzer-Ellenbogen contributed reporting.