Emery recently made a controversial addition to its growing repertoire of buildings with the official establishment of a new home for Emery’s seniors this school year.
In a move “straight out of the left field,” as Senior Mia Septimus describes, Emery repurposed its former Senior Lounge or “Slounge,” as many alumni and students fondly referred to it, into a new state-of-the-art classroom, seemingly leaving the Class of 2024 high and dry. However, when student-athletes showed up for tryouts in early August, word spread like wildfire of the appearance of a boxy and shack-like structure that now occupied a former lunch space between the high school and commons. From the messages spread through Snapchat, Instagram stories, and iMmessaging, the student body soon realized this structure would be the new staple of Emery senior life, a new senior home.
Unsurprisingly, at first, many students questioned the validity of this new senior space as unfamiliarity and uncertainty made many rising seniors feel robbed of a critical feature of Emery’s student life. To the rising Seniors, receiving the old “Slounge” was a tradition representative of the freedom and newfound responsibilities that came with becoming the oldest students on campus, and by altering that practice, the feeling of truly“becoming seniors” would be difficult to achieve.
These concerns were especially voiced by the Student Government Association (SGA) President Audrey Hochglaube, who stated that “every class deserves to get the chance to spend time in the Slounge space. I don’t see why our class has to be the one to suffer from the expansion of the school, even though it has been growing for years. Plus, getting the chance to call the Slounge our own would have created a more tight-knit community and connection between us and the rest of the student body.”
Although Hochglaube’s concerns are very sensible, many students seem to have overcome the drawbacks and come to accept the new space as their own and claim it is even better than last year’s senior lounge.
Senior Ava Cotta voiced her perspective on the positive aspects of the new space as she said, “Even though we don’t get to have the traditional senior lounge, I think our new space is a bit better; I mean, we have more privacy, we can be louder, and we can customize the space to our liking in ways not possible back in the old room. Also, we have a lot more space in the new building compared to the old one, so most of the grade can fit in there comfortably.”
Ultimately, the new senior space may not have been what the Class of 2024 was expecting, but it is here to stay, and it seems the Seniors have begun to make the most of what they have and made it their own. Either way, the biggest looming question and debate that’s been on everyone’s mind is what to dub this new space: Slounge, Shlack, or Chalet.
