One of The Hill School’s impressive aspects of campus life is its Student Organizations. The governing body of these student organizations, less formally known as the SO, provides Hill students with a predominant voice in the community. In correspondence with the SO, students are allowed to form groups and clubs on campus, expressing a variety of interests.  

While the SO has strong attachments to many faculty on campus, one of the most dominant is Bobbi Jo Keefer, Director of Leadership Programs at Hill. Keefer, along with other faculty and students involved, have been working to make the SO registration process and overall format more formal. The goal of doing this is to “give student organizations the opportunity to program and to go back to the original intent of using Friday evenings and Saturday mornings for this purpose,” Keefer explained. “There was the expectation that Friday evenings and Saturdays could be used for meetings and student-led programming. I never say anything is permanent. You need to try something new for at least a year and evaluate it at the end before deciding either way.” 

Along with the adjustments to meeting times and the number of meetings required, other areas of the SO are being enforced as well. There is a new rule that states that all student organizations must hold at least two school-wide events per academic year. Each group also must meet at least once a month and there will be a push to make these groups more academically focused rather than socially focused.  

Keefer has ensured that all new changes are beneficial for the SO and has the highest intent to use this incredible system to the best of its ability. Every person in the student body should feel and know that there is a place or a group on campus for them. Giving the SO a more significant and established structure will make it possible to involve a greater number of people and will create a bigger impact on our community. Keefer states that it is her goal “to walk the groups through the proposed changes and the why behind it”. She is very confident that these changes are for the better and has made it very clear that students and faculty alike will be supported with everything throughout the year. The future is incredibly bright for all our student organizations, as they continue to grow and improve with each passing year.