Oh, what ever happened to my accepted suggestion of adding more tasks...
Maria asked for task suggestions in the faculty chat, maybe she didn't get enough or any of good enough quality. Or, maybe she never got around to it and eventually just forgot about it altogether. Am salty about that too, I listed some BANGER tasks, she only liked one of them ):<
I've been ranting about this in LOOC during/after detention aand in the faculty chat for years now, detention has always been boring. I won't beat a dead horse and repeat what other people have said, scroll up and you'll find more than a few great arguments.
I would like to mention though, this would require active effort from the faculty side. A lot of faculty members have trouble dealing with troublesome players already, and giving these players more of an opportunity to make things more difficult or potentially even FailRP. Additionally, if players are always given the same new "alternative" tasks as always (such as cleaning, exercise, etc) they'll eventually get bored of those, too. It's easy to fall into a rhythm and eventually optimize roleplay that you don't inherently care about (similar to what has happened with the current state of detention), meaning that unless these alternate punishments are always varied and different, at least one side is going to get bored eventually.
A suggestion that I have for any faculty members for something you can already do to make detention much more personalized and
realistic is actually try and work with the students in a way that is humane and kind (and not dictator authoritarian "DO THIS OR I'LL GET YOU FUCKING SUSPENDED!!!!"). Take on the role of "guidance counselor" and actually talk them through the student's issues, understand the full context of the situation, be interested. Even if you aren't experienced in giving advice, just try to have a conversation as though you're speaking with another human being, it's much more engageable and interactive for both yourself and the student this way.
I've done this on both my teacher and councilor accounts, and I've experienced some cool moments of character development from the delinquent side. 100% recommend, even if your character is notably mean or uncaring.