Every Thursday, the communications office sends out an all-school email containing important information, announcements, dates and anything else that the UPrep community needs to know. However, these emails are not actually sent to the entire UPrep community. They are sent to parents and guardians of UPrep students but not to the students themselves. Because they are labeled ‘all-school’ emails, this can lead parents and teachers to assume that students are also receiving them, leaving us without the information.
Five years ago, the communications office, along with the Head of School, Ronnie Codrington-Cazeau, decided to address ‘all-school’ emails solely to parents and guardians, according to Mary Beth Lambert, Director of Marketing and Communications.
“The all-school email is focused on providing information to parents and guardians, and for student communication, there’s Schoology, which faculty, advisers and students use to communicate with each other,” Lambert said.
The most recent example of how this system has failed is the announcement of a new schedule for next year, which was sent through the ‘all-school’ email at 4 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 18, 2025. There was no announcement of this new schedule on Schoology. Students, many of whom weren’t even aware there would be a new schedule, had to find out through word of mouth and dozens of complaints. Why are we being kept out of the loop on essential information that is almost always about us?
Members of The Puma Press have published multiple articles in the past four years about a lack of communication with the student body. On March 10, 2021, Parisa Harvey (‘22) and Wally Bargeron (‘21) published an editorial titled “Keeping Students in the Loop.” Nine months later, Harvey (‘21) and Anika Shashidhar (‘22) published another one, “Students Still Out of the Loop,” about the same issue. After four years and two editorials, the communications office still sends weekly ‘all-school’ emails to parents, and students are still out of the loop.
How many times do we need to fight for information about our school until the administration finally decides that we should have the right to know about our own education?
This is a challenging school. Students with high academic standards attend this school to receive the best education they can and to prepare themselves for a bright future. We want to know what’s going on, what we can participate in, and how to further our academic careers. We cannot do this if our school does not give us the information about events, programs and opportunities we need, and therefore, we must learn about them secondhand.
The school’s vision is to “redefine educational excellence, in a community where all learners develop the skills, knowledge, and character to thrive in any context”, according to universityprep.org. To achieve this vision, the administration must provide us with the information necessary for us to develop into intellectually courageous, socially responsible citizens of the world.
