Character, Tradition, and Achievement. Every Rochester High School student and staff member recognizes these three words. But I’d like to add one more. Change. To be fair, I’m talking more about renovation for this story, but change has a nicer ring to it. 

This past year has been a big one for our school. Construction began on the locker bank areas in late December as plans for new collab areas were put into motion. After weeks of anticipation for these areas to finally open up to the student body, this last week marked the very first week after the caution tape was taken down. In honor of that, let’s take a quick trip back to the start of the year to see what was going on in RHS. 

Back in October 2023, the Senior Class of 2024 and the Junior class decorated these locker banks for the very last time during Homecoming Week. With the Medieval theme “A Knight to Remember”, our Seniors took on royalty and Juniors took on wizards. As the last classes to ever use and decorate these lockers, a lot was hanging on making it the best year yet. Here’s what Senior Class President Allie Crawford said, 

“Well I feel like for my four years of being on StuGo, it was always a thing where the Seniors always had the best locker banks because they put the most work into everything and I was always looking forward to that so it was really cool finally being in that position and being able to decorate it.”

Not only does RHS have some longstanding traditions, but also some long-standing memories. The locker banks have been a large part of past graduating classes, especially in a time when textbooks and notebooks were used by every single student. As a school, we’re extremely fortunate to be able to go through these changes and renovate as the years go by, but wondering what our Falcon Alumni think about this, I asked graduating Class of 2009 Alum Mariam Saco, 

“This change is a big change, taking away the lockers is a big step towards modernizing the school and having it go into more of a modern-day style of learning because there’s no need for lockers if the use of books has decreased, at the same time, it gives a college vibe to the campus and prepares students for life in college.”

Rochester High School has gone through various different types of renovations throughout the years, most before we even became Falcons. Did you know that just a few years ago the entire mall looked completely different than it does now? We also debuted our infamous block letter “R” projection in the hallway shortly before the Class of 2024 became Freshman. And now we have the locker/collab area renovation to put into the books as well. 

 Following the examples of our Upper and Lower Collabs, the new Senior and Junior Collabs are filled with comfortable couches, tables, booths, and the newest additions being TV’s. Students and staff members are able to use these spaces to study, hang out, have class, or even just sit down and relax for a bit. 

These spaces were made with YOU in mind, and these past few days, Mr. Wrinkle and Mr. Amore have been personally going around the school asking students from every grade what they envision these spaces to become and what they would like to see happen, so here’s what Mr. Wrinkle himself envisions it to be, 

“Our grade levels don’t really have an opportunity to connect with each other so when we had the opportunity to add these two collab spaces, my vision would be that those two spaces are where all the Juniors and all the Seniors hang out and where they spend time with each other and rekindle friendships.”

Not only do these collabs offer a new and comfortable location for our student body to hang out and spend some time together, but Mr. Wrinkle also hopes that these new collab spaces provide teachers with a new opportunity to take the class outside of the regular classroom and mimic a college campus experience for our Seniors who’s next step takes place pursuing further education. 

Mr. Wrinkle also added, “Here’s my only word of caution, the only way that this stuff doesn’t work in the way that any of us want it to work is if people choose not to take care of it the way that they should; if it starts getting trashed, then we have to shut it down and none of us want to do that but we also know that we need to preserve that stuff.” 

While Seniors only have a short amount of time left to utilize these new collabs spaces, Juniors, Sophomores, and Freshman have the chance to use and take care of this new opportunity for years to come so that future generations of RHS Falcons will be able to enjoy even more change throughout campus. So our best advice to you, is exactly what the whiteboards say, “Clean it, Or Close it”. Now before we close out this story, here are a few final thoughts on the new collab spaces from fellow RHS students,

Crawford added, “It’s sad that it’s gone now but I really like the new area that they implemented especially since we can’t have off-campus lunch, it’s a cool thing that just the Seniors get to use and especially during classes, it’s fun to go there and it’s a very open and comfy seating.”

“I think that it’s a cool little area that they have for the seniors and I like all of the new couches,” Senior Madalyn Howes answered. 

Senior Brooke Haney mentioned, “I like it, I think it’s cool and a much better use of the space than the lockers and I think it’s good to have a Senior-only area.”

“I love it so much and I think it’s great but the only thing I would change is to turn on the TV’s and get rolling chairs and that would make it perfect,” Senior Lillian Moxley suggested. 

Character, Tradition, Achievement. And Change.