Last Friday, Dr. Raynard Kington sat before the school, hundreds of students watching in anticipation. A click. A pause. And then—there it was. A Roblox game. For a moment, the entire student body straightened in their seats. Was this really happening? The Head of School was about to play Roblox on the big screen. But just as quickly as the moment arrived, it vanished. After barely touching the keyboard, Dr. Kington passed the computer to a volunteer, and the game faded into the background as the fireside chat resumed—another surface-level conversation, another wasted opportunity. This was the All-School Meeting (ASM) that promised engagement but delivered little more than an anti-climactic spectacle—brief, attention-grabbing, and ultimately empty.
Andover had in front of it Dr. Jack Buckley—CIA analyst, Navy nuclear reactor engineer, former Commissioner of National Education Statistics, Senior VP at the College Board, and now VP of People Science at Roblox. This was a man who has led research shaping national education policy, redesigned the SAT, and pioneered data-driven hiring in one of the largest tech companies in the world. This ASM had all the makings of something great. A high-profile guest speaker, a new conversational format, a game projected on the big screen—everything pointed to something engaging and fresh.
The game, Kaiju Cat, was meant to illustrate how Roblox uses game-based assessments in hiring. But rather than diving into how companies like Roblox are revolutionizing talent evaluation, we watched as a volunteer casually played in the background while the conversation remained frustratingly surface-level.
Let’s put this in perspective.
Dr. Buckley isn’t just another corporate VP. He has served as a CIA analyst, an engineer for Navy nuclear reactors, and the Commissioner for National Education Statistics. At the College Board, he helped redesign the SAT, and now, at Roblox, he’s shaping the future of data-driven hiring. This is a man who could have spoken about leadership, education reform, analytics—or even intelligence work. He could have spoken about how data science is reshaping hiring at major companies, the future of education and standardized testing, or even lessons of discipline and grit from working in the CIA, the military, and corporate America. Instead, we got a chat that only scratched the surface—focusing on broad, predictable topics rather than taking advantage of Dr. Buckley’s expertise. Instead of diving into his work in education reform or the complexities of data-driven hiring, the conversation lingered on vague career advice and general observations about workplace culture. These were insightful but not the kind of discussion that fully utilized a speaker of his caliber.
It wasn’t just the anti-climactic moment that made this ASM fall flat. The format actively contributed to the distraction. By projecting the Roblox game on the big screen, the school essentially encouraged students to hop on their devices and join the game. And they did—flooding the server with messages and emotes, spamming in front of the screen. This led to one of the most bizarre ASM consequences in recent memory: over 40 phones confiscated. An iPad, too. Given the circumstances, this outcome was almost inevitable. You cannot take a school full of hyper-online students, put a multiplayer game on a massive projector, and expect them to just sit there and watch. It’s like dropping food in a koi pond and being shocked when the fish swarm.
This ASM raises a bigger question: What exactly is the purpose of All-School Meetings? If ASMs are supposed to be intellectually enriching, then they should leave students with new ideas to think about–not a game demo that overshadows the discussion. If they’re supposed to be engaging, then the format should actively encourage insightful discourse among the community, rather than create an accidental distraction. If they’re supposed to be community-driven, then why not involve students in shaping them? A simple post, or a survey on ASM could help the administration understand what works and what doesn’t, so moments like this aren’t just a waste of potential. There’s something fundamentally broken when we have a top-tier guest speaker and somehow manage to walk away with nothing memorable—except the moment our Head of School played Roblox for five seconds.
This isn’t a complaint—it’s a demand for better.
We deserve ASMs that don’t just fill time but actually mean something. We deserve speakers who are fully utilized, conversations that go beyond the surface, and engagement that doesn’t feel like empty hype. Some ASMs stick with us—though not always for the right reasons. When someone declared, “You are not your politics” right before the presidential election, it didn’t just ignite a series of memes, it also sparked genuine debate about identity and civic engagement. When Olympic swimmer Andrew Wilson told us to stop stressing over grades, his message may have not transformed the student body overnight, but it did make people pause and reflect briefly. Those ASMs challenged us. They left us something to wrestle with. This one? It got people talking, but only about how many phones were confiscated and how underwhelming the Roblox demo was. The discourse that followed wasn’t about ideas—it was about the distractions.
That’s what made this ASM frustrating—it had the same potential, but it didn’t deliver. A speaker of Dr. Buckley’s caliber could have left us with lessons on leadership, education, or even intelligence work. In the conversations I had afterward, most of what I heard wasn’t about Dr. Buckley’s insights, but about the phones that got confiscated and the fleeting Roblox demo. While some students may have taken away more, the general response seemed to focus more on the spectacle than the substance. And maybe that’s the real frustration. There was potential for something meaningful, but it never materialized. A speaker of Dr. Buckley’s caliber could have left us with lessons on leadership, education, or even intelligence work. Instead, the conversation afterward wasn’t about new ideas or thought-provoking discussions—it was about what could have been.
