Carlos Hoyt wants more student input in All-School Meetings. This is the first year that Hoyt, the Associate Dean of Students, has been in charge of planning the mandatory weekly meetings.” Hoyt’s philosophy on All-School Meeting is that it should “bolster and deepen the sense of community” within the school. He has several thoughts on how to incorporate students into ASM coordination and allow these “stakeholders” to join together and plan useful and interesting All-School Meetings. Though he says it has been “hard to be…visionary while having to learn logistics,” Hoyt has developed ideas for the long-term future of the All-School Meeting program. He has been toying with the idea of creating a group of work duty students called PACE Partners. Consisting of Uppers and Seniors, PACE Partners would participate in the Lower PACE classes as well as voice student opinions in the planning of All-School Meetings, Wellness Week, and the PACE program. Hoyt hopes that the PACE Partners will be active in getting the word out about the weekly meetings, as well as collecting short surveys from students afterwards. These evaluations, the results of which would be posted on PAnet, would ask students’ opinion on the value of the content, as well as how All-School Meetings could be improved. In addition to immediate student feedback, Hoyt hopes to increase student content in the meetings. Currently, students sometimes make announcements at the beginning of the meetings and perform in the student talent and entertainment All-School Meetings, but he would like to see students presenting in front of the rest of the community. Hoyt pointed out multiple issues in planning All-School Meetings that would be easier to get around with students’ help. Because the student body is composed of approximately 1,100 students spanning a wide range of ages, it is difficult to gauge different students’ perspectives on the purpose of All-School Meeting, Hoyt said. Clare Monfredo ’09 said that, though she generally likes ASM and thinks the topics discussed are relevant and varied, occasionally reaching outside the school boundaries to consider issues at large would be beneficial to the student body. All-School Meetings, she said, should “try to make us more aware of broader, more significant issues.” One topic she suggested was a discussion of the 2008 presidential campaign. Monfredo said that an ASM on the subject would allow students to learn about outside occurrences as well as how the issues Phillips Academy faces are dealt with on a larger scale. Hoyt also has little leeway in planning the weekly meetings, as only nine out of the school year’s 30 All-School Meetings are not occupied with programs scheduled at the beginning of the year, such as the Summer Reflections ASM. Hoyt has numerous ideas, including a meeting on decorum to say what is expected of Andover students and elevated levels of engagement between international and domestic, day and boarding students. Hoyt would like to continue to find ways to incorporate discussion of community, diversity, and plurality within Andover, but not all students think that is the best direction to go in. “Sometimes All-School Meetings can be informative and fun…[but] I feel that the continual emphasis on ‘community’ dilutes the effect that the meetings are supposed to have,” said Kyle Ofori ’09. That two of this term’s speakers were professors from Harvard was a coincidence. Having heard about the “psychology of happiness,” Hoyt was referred to recent speaker Shawn Achor through another speaker in the field. Similarly, he was referred to technology speaker John Palfrey after talking to Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes ’02 about an All School Meeting centered on cyberspace and the Internet. The search for speakers, however, is only part of the ASM planning process. In addition to securing a speaker, a difficult task to achieve if the speaker is popular, Hoyt must track down funds to pay the speaker. Different departments sponsor speakers, so he sometimes receives funds from the CAMD office, Abbot Grants, the PACE/Wellness Week budget or an allotment of money put aside by the Dean of Students’ office. Mr. Hoyt called his role as ASM coordinator a “service leadership job,” not a directorship. His vision of All School Meeting, he said, was for it to be “for the community, of the community, and by the community.” Said Hoyt, “It needs a point guard, and that’s what I play.”