The morning announcements on Wednesday, May 6, broke the news that the Counseling Center would be locking its doors during the school day and be accessible by appointment only, inspired by safety and management concerns regarding the space and students’ abuse of it.

Five days later, on Monday, May 11, the same PA system announced the Counseling Center’s reopening.

Now, when students experience a mental health issue, they are allowed 15 minutes to “get back to their baseline” in one of the two special rooms in the Counseling Center, and if they are still not feeling well, they must call home, counselor Ms. Megan Huynh said.

Students may also spend time in the Counseling Center outside of class time if they are quiet and respectful of the space.

The initial, stricter policy — in which the doors were physically locked, and if students wanted to enter without an appointment, they had to get a blue slip from the front office — served as a way to reset the Counseling Center and reestablish the intended purpose of the space, Ms. Huynh said.

“I think it was more of a reset to just understand that this is a counseling space; this is a calm space,” Ms. Huynh said.

According to Ms. Huynh, many students were abusing the previous openness of the Counseling Center by telling their teachers they needed to see their counselor but instead were just hanging out in the space when they weren’t supposed to be, making it less peaceful and raising safety concerns.

Students like senior Abby Baye often use this space as a way to calm down, or as a quiet place to relax.

“It’s just kind of hidden away from the rest of the school, which I appreciate,” she said. “It’s just a nice getaway.”

However, Baye said she noticed that students were often in the Counseling Center for the wrong reasons.

“Sometimes, I’ll go in there and ask people what they’re doing in there, and they’ll just be like, ‘Oh, I’m just sitting in here. I don’t want to go to class,’” she said. “Those people are the people that ruined it for everyone else.”

Although sophomore Maddie Mosen feels the updated policy is functional, she believes the initial lockdown policy would have caused harm.

“Mental health is a very serious issue, and it’s one of the hardest things to ask for help for,” she said. “Locking the Counseling Center is just putting another barrier between students and getting help, and also taking [it] away from all the people that have accommodations.”

Her hope is that the Counseling Center has as few barriers as possible to accessing it, even with the updated policy — something Ms. Huynh was also concerned about. Ms. Huynh explained that sometimes, allowing students to regularly be in the Counseling Center, often brought in by friends, made them more comfortable with using its resources.

“It’s intimidating to reach out to an adult blindly through an email,” she said. “What was nice about having the Counseling Center open is anybody can show up, seeing your friends connect with a counselor and see that, ‘Oh this isn’t as intimidating; it’s a casual conversation. This is a space where I can … feel safe and comfortable.’”

At the same time, Ms. Huynh acknowledged that concerns over physical safety and space management must be addressed.

“It just is hard, once all three of us [counselors] are occupied meeting with a student, seeing what’s going on out there,” Ms. Huynh said.

She mentioned that students roaming the halls during class time often end up in the Counseling Center, and while they were given permission to meet with their counselors from their teachers, the counselors were not communicated with. She explained this led to a messy situation in which students were unaccounted for and sometimes disrupted the space.

In the few days since the reset has happened, however, Ms. Huynh has noticed a positive improvement.

“Students are doing a lot better at communicating and acknowledging that they do need to schedule if possible, or if they do need to check in with a counselor, going to the front [office],” Ms. Huynh said. “It is a lot easier in terms of one, we’re able to manage better, and there’s a clear safety thing — we know where students are.”

But the positive impacts extend beyond safety, leading to a more mutually respectful space, Ms. Huynh said.

“I think that also showed a lot of maturity for a lot of our students,” Ms. Huynh said. “It was a good eye-opener for some students who weren’t needing the space — and who were being loud, playing games, and being disruptive to some degree — that there were kids that just needed to get back to their baseline.”

She also mentioned how this policy is in part affected by senior Luke Wardwell’s passing and his recent memorial service, which she described as “a big disruption to our community.”

“Grief looks different and it shows up differently every single day,” Ms. Huynh said.

She explained that each student’s handling of grief is very situational, which can be difficult to balance.

“It’s hard to be in the school system and have something standardized but also acknowledge that there are needs that need to be met,” she said. “It was also tough because I think there were students that moved on and forgot that there’s still people grieving, and that the space is sacred to some degree … We have to respect the fact that people are showing up differently.”

Overall, she emphasized that it is an ongoing conversation of how to make the space best reflect what students need.

“It’s just a conversation of how mental health and school coincide with each other,” Ms. Huynh said. “I think having the conversation of why the Counseling Center is important and why it is important to have a safe space and feel comfortable makes those conversations easier, because we want students to be successful.”

However complex the discussion may get, Mosen hopes the Counseling Center remains a secure space and is accessible to students when they need it.

“I think the important part of the Counseling Center, at least to me, is that it remains a safe space that students can go to but is easily accessible for other students as well,” Mosen said. “I think that any students should be able to ask for help if they need help, and I would just hope that in the future, the Counseling Center is open to those people and there’s not a really strong barrier that discourages people from getting what they need.”