Randomly ringing bells, oddly shortened classes, and widespread confusion. Students have started to expect these things during a day with a scheduled mass or assembly. Unfortunately, they have also begun to expect not having advisory.

Not having advisory violates the whole point of the advisory program. The administration must ensure that advisory occurs every day, even when there is a variation in the schedule.

According to Advisory Program Coordinator Danica Attanasio, some of the goals of the advisory program are to “strengthen teacher-student and student-student relationships” and “provide each student with an adult advocate.”

Skipping advisory prevents the program from achieving these goals. Students can’t strengthen their relationships with their advisors and fellow advisees if they don’t interact. If students have problems, they can’t resolve them with their advisors if they don’t meet that day. The advisory program’s goals are a five-day-a-week project. They can’t be accomplished if time isn’t put into advisory.

Skipping advisory is not only a hindrance to the program’s goals, but it’s just plain inconvenient. Many students plan on using the ten-minute break to do last-minute studying and homework. Losing this time of expected productivity is a nasty surprise and not fair to students.

Despite these obvious setbacks, the administration continues to use advisory as a “get out of jail free card” whenever their assemblies run longer than planned. The most recent example was the Nov. 1 All Saints’ Day Mass, which ran more than twenty minutes over the allotted time. As a result, students diverged from the scheduled X bell, skipping advisory, and heading straight to their mod two class.

It is easy to see why the administration is inclined to use advisory in this way. It does appear to be an open ten-minute buffer zone, giving some elbowroom to whomever plans the hectic bell schedule used that day. Whatever damages that result from skipping advisory seem secondary to the importance of obtaining the maximum amount of class time. The administration is right to worry about missing class time, but they don’t have the right solution.

Advisory should be a buffer zone, but not for scheduling—for stragglers. Besides those students who have a valid excuse, like the seniors who have to put away the chairs, the conclusion of every assembly always sees a few stragglers who linger to avoid going to class. Teachers lose class time waiting on these students. Adding advisory would not lower the amount of stragglers, but it would ensure that they only waste their personal advisory time, rather than their fellow student’s class time. Even with the 10-minute advisory, there would still be the same amount of class time because no one should be late to class.

The only solution to this problem is to hold assemblies to their outlined time. The administration can’t create a schedule and fix the bells in the time right after an assembly, even if they do have an extra 10 minutes that would be advisory. Schedules must be planned ahead, so presentations and masses must be kept to a specified time.

Fr. Sutton is experienced at timing his mass and homilies so they don’t stretch over. However, guest speakers don’t always know how long their presentation should be. JC must notify these guest speakers of their time allowance far in advance, so they don’t go over and cut out advisory.

Advisory is an integral part of the school day, and it needs to be treated as such, not just a free period to help with scheduling conflicts. If the administration kept advisory after assemblies, they would keep in line with the goals outlined for the advisory program, and maximize class time. It’s a win-win scenario—the administration just needs to realize it.

Rebecca Driver is a Copy Editor for The Patriot and jcpatriot.com