Picture this: you’re an eighth-grade girl, and it’s your first day of the new school year. Every year before this one, you have had single-gender locker commons. You walk into your locker commons expecting to see only girls, but you stop in shock as you watch five boys wrestle each other to the ground in front of you. You haven’t had to deal with boys in your locker commons before, so seeing so many of them shocks and confuses you. In the Middle School, the 6th and 7th graders have single-gender locker commons, meaning that the 6th-grade boys are in one locker commons and the 6th-grade girls are in another. It’s the same thing in 7th grade. But in eighth grade, students transition to having mixed locker commons, meaning having both genders in one. What made the school make this decision, and how do the grade chairs and students feel about this change?
The school started the mixed-gender eighth-grade locker commons two years ago, in 2021. 8th-grade boys Grade Chair Patrick Egan says the change stems from a sense among teachers that students of the opposite gender have become more awkward around each other because of COVID-19. “I think a large part of it is meeting what the needs of our students were, especially post-pandemic, and interaction is one thing we always want to work on,” he says. “How do we bring boys and girls together, especially after the pandemic, this batch in particular?”
But how do the students themselves feel about it? Many don’t like it. Many students have noticed that girls and boys have not been equally distributed between the two locker commons. The reason is that there are so many girls in the first half of the alphabet and so many boys in the second half; the imbalance causes the remaining girls and boys to feel outnumbered by the other gender and uncomfortable, making them migrate to the opposite locker commons for socializing. Sierra Malek, an eighth-grade girl in Egan’s locker commons, feels outnumbered by the boys in her space and just ends up in the other locker commons. “What happens is since there’s so many girls in the first half of the alphabet, that the girls from the other [Egan’s] locker commons, including me, just come over here to socialize and stuff, and then the boys to go the other one,” she says.
Even though some students aren’t opposed to the mixed locker commons, they concede that it makes others awkward. Matt Miller, an eighth-grade boy in Egan’s locker commons, says it does not bother him but can get uncomfortable for others. “I don’t mind it, but I do feel like in some cases it is a little awkward,” he says, “I mean not for me personally, but I know for others, especially girls, it can be a little bit . . . interesting.”
Teachers say the change mostly has benefits, but admit that the arrangement has weaknesses, too. Having half the grade on the other side of the hallway can make it hard for the Grade Chairs to get to know the full extent of their students. 8th-grade girls’ Grade Chair Catherine Zidow says that the locker commons can stop her from getting to know the entire group of eighth-grade girls. “Last year, I felt like I didn’t see 50% of my girls as much as I wanted to,” she says. Ironically, the imbalance that bothers the students has made Zidow’s job easier this year. “It’s because of the alphabet and the way girls’ names are divided; I actually have about 65% of the girls in my locker commons, so that is a huge win,” she says.
Ultimately, Zidow thinks it is a great change and helps to bring the eighth grade together. “In terms of how it builds community, and it breaks down the segregations of the genders here, I think it’s fantastic.”