Ms. Mayoral’s goals

At Barnum Hall on the day of eighth grade promotion, Eva Mayoral spoke with pride and confidence that our class would go on to be successful during our high school experience and thereafter. Then, when I heard she was going to be the principal of Samo I had a flashback to graduation day and I heard her speech clearly in my head, I saw her proud eyes and I remember thinking: this is going to be a great year.Mayoral genuinely believes in the concept of family. She wants for us to look back in 20 years and think of our school with warmth; for us to say “those were good times.” Mayoral’s goals, despite students’ behavior at the rules assemblies, remain the same: to promote unity and to make Samo a true community, a family. Her recent decision of canceling the pep rally, however, led students to be blinded by the negativity of the decision.I understand that many students, who did not previously know Mayoral, might have felt as if she was intruding. However, her rationale towards canceling the homecoming rally because of students’ behavior at the rules assemblies, was justified. Honestly, did people believe there would be no consequences for their disrespectful and unacceptable behavior? I agree that we can cheer and clap but the majority did not know when to stop. The bigger issue here is that we are all young adults and should know the limit.Safety is one of the reasons she takes her responsibility seriously. According to Mayoral, she was at JAMS last June when a gunman opened fire on SMC students, and she had to help evacuate the middle school which is right across the street. She recounted with a shaky tone and intense eyes how she held little four-year olds hands during the evacuation and watched them be surrounded and shielded by officers holding big riffles. She said that the threat was so real and that she still gets heart palpitations at night from that horrifying experience. She wants to be completely sure that students will be able to react accordingly if any situation were to happen.I agree with her decision of canceling the homecoming rally because as the head of the family, Mayoral, must enforce rules for the sake of our safety. We must trust that her decisions will only benefit the student body, and that her intentions are to provide a safe, yet fun environment.She is not being paranoid; she is being pre-cautious and responsible. She has true intentions to make this an incredible year. We still have time to fix our errors and prove to everyone, but mainly to ourselves, that we can make better decisions as a school and grow from this experience.According to Mayoral she hasn’t spoken to other media besides The Samohi and one other newspaper. She knows that Samo’s students are good kids, but she also admits that we have to recognize that we made a bad choice. Her intentions are not to demean us to the public eye and make it a scandal. There is no reason for her or anyone else to tell the world about the issues happening at Samo because it will simply create gossip.“What happens between us and our kids, should remain just between us,” Mayoral said.Ultimately, Mayoral’s recent actions have proved effective towards accomplishing her goal seeing as it influenced a great sense of unity within the student body. When the homecoming rally was canceled the student body acted rationally and we appropriately demonstrated our discontent. Together we fought for the rally, and although were were unsuccessful we gained something much better, a united student body: Mayoral’s vision for the school.I think that we should all give Mayoral a second chance to prove to those who are doubting her decisions, that she has good-hearted intentions to unify us; all grades, from ninth to twelfth. No matter how diverse our school is, we can come together and grow as a whole and become a family. A family who respects each other, who is compassionate and caring of one another, but most of all who values the work of our fellow classmates and the work of our dedicated staff.bgonzalez@thesamohi.com