In response to the graffiti threat discovered last Thursday, some students have decided to spend Friday at home — while some parents decided to bring their children home. Students not attending classes will either have to be off-campus beginning Thursday night, or in Isham throughout Friday beginning Thursday night. Gauri Thaker ’10 said, “[My parents] don’t think it’s that much of a threat,” but Thaker is still going home for Friday. She has free cuts in three of her classes, so “my parents were like, ‘we’ll just take you home.’” She knew about the cuts before last Thursday and “we were going to ask them for me to be absent from those classes anyway,” Thaker said, and “it just so happened that [5/30/08] happened on the same day.” Lisa Joel, Dean of Abbot Cluster, said that very few families have requested excuses from school on May 30. She estimates that, in all, there will be around 15 Abbot students who will not attend classes this Friday, and so far, only 4 of the students who will not be on campus are doing so because it of the 5/30/08 threat. Khadijah Owens ’11 is taking personal time from all of her classes – except for biology, in which the class is learning new material – to go to Boston for some shopping. However, the threat coincided with her decision by pure chance. She and a friend lamented their “wasted personal time” winter term, so she hoped to use her allotted excused absences this term. As of Wednesday morning, Nadine Khan ’09 had not decided what she was going to do on Friday. Khan’s mother “wants me [Khan] to find a day student,” said Khan. She said she “may just go to Boston” because most of her friends are going to be at school. Gustavo Tavares ’09 is taking the day to go to his roommate’s house. “My mom is freaking out,” he explained. But Tavares thinks that leaving campus “is going to be a pain,” because he will have to be back on campus for other events over the weekend. Any student or parent, she said, who expressed any concern was granted a Dean’s excuse. She doubts, however, that many students used the threat as a way of avoiding going to class. “If that’s the case,” she said, “I suspect it’s a very small number of students…[because I] expect that students are using personal integrity.” Celia Lewis contributed reporting.
