Student Council and School Prefect Reform
A new role has been implemented into the school, that being the "Prefect." Comprised of model students, the prefects act as "hall monitors" who report any instances of rule breaking to higher authorities. I believe prefects are a good addition to the student faction, but there is unused potential that could improve not only the prefects, but the existing student council as well. And with that said, there are a few issues I see with this role as it currently stands:
The responsibility of the prefect, that being monitoring school grounds, is already covered by the council and school faculty; there aren't enough delinquents on your average day to justify introducing another role which patrols the school. In addition to this, Prefects have no FearRP authority, meaning they cannot do anything about delinquent students on their own. If a prefect collects evidence of the student doing something wrong, there is nothing stopping that student from just assaulting the prefect and destroying the evidence.
In the other corner of the student faction, the student council has been facing issues as of late. Particularly, we are lacking in the "events" and "assisting students" departments, which makes up half of our responsibilities. We do keep ourselves busy with disciplinary affairs and by helping with events larger than us, but that comes at the cost of our initial goal, which was to improve the general school experience.
The Solution? Delegate the council's disciplinary responsibilities to the prefects, and more clearly define what both groups' objectives are. By doing this, you allow for both factions to perform their duties to a higher degree; the student council will be able to focus on improving the school and hosting events, while the school prefects can take over on any disciplinary affairs. Below is a proposal for what each groups primary mission and supplementary tasks should be.
| Updated Responsibilities | |
Student Council The student council's tasks will be geared more towards assisting players and providing more for them to do on a day to day basis, rather than being focused primarily on disciplinary roleplay. | Assist any student who needs help Help supervise during classes and events Monitor sports practices and club meetings Host large-scale server wide events Host small flash events or small activities in the council room |
School Prefects Prefects will be concerned with anything and everything related to disciplinary action, such as issuing and monitoring detentions. | Patrol the school campus Handle any disciplinary affairs within the school Provide basic counseling for troubled students Compile reports on persistently delinquent students |
As an alternative to my main suggestion, here is a proposal I made for the student council in December of last year, which was never expanded on by the council higher-ups. In it, I suggest the addition of "committees" to the council, which similarly aims to solve the issues of our current council not delegating enough resources to its many responsibilities. (I also used it as a baseline for this suggestion if that's not obvious lol.)
Personally, I think that even with my prior suggestions, the council and prefects are just different flavors of the same thing, and are pretty hard to distinguish between. It would be more convenient for everybody if they operated under one role, since there would be no confusion as to which student group does what thing. But at the same time, prefects are still a new thing and I'm not so brazen as to suggest getting rid of it within one day of it existing.
Regardless of whether or not the proposal outlined in this document is used, I hope it might inspire ideas for our current factions or at least provide insight as to how we might improve them.
Personally, I think that even with my prior suggestions, the council and prefects are just different flavors of the same thing, and are pretty hard to distinguish between. It would be more convenient for everybody if they operated under one role, since there would be no confusion as to which student group does what thing. But at the same time, prefects are still a new thing and I'm not so brazen as to suggest getting rid of it within one day of it existing.
Regardless of whether or not the proposal outlined in this document is used, I hope it might inspire ideas for our current factions or at least provide insight as to how we might improve them.
SRP is a roleplay, which is an emulation of reality, not a perfect reflection. There are many aspects of SRP that don't make sense if you think too hard about it, and it's like that by design. Not everything needs to be realistic, if it was then playing the server would be no different than going to actual real life school every day (and nobody wants to come home from a long day of work / school just to do more work).
The general consensus is, as long as something contributes to making the server more enjoyable and makes just enough sense to be believable, then it's fair game to implement it. I think everything I suggested meets the criteria.
In the past 6 months, there have been two major events which involved the student council, and a handful of minor flash events. In my opinion, the council thinks too hard over small-scale events, which is why they happen as infrequently as they do. I think we could realistically be doing small flash events on a weekly basis, if not more. If you look at the teaching factions, you'll see two rosters full of individual people that are expected to hold 20 minute activities at least 10 times in the span of a month. Is it so unrealistic to say that the council, a group of a dozen people, could easily do at least one activity per week? We don't even have to be restricted to subject matter, like the teaching factions are.
Back when Lara (the former HS President) was around, she'd plan games out 30 minutes in advance and announce it like it was a class. She just did this whenever she was bored, too; there was never any drawn out process, just a notification in council chat that she's doing something soon and that anyone is welcome to help. This is the way we should be doing it, just a casual fun thing, rather than planning something out weeks in advance for the sake of a 30 minute activity.
In regards to large-scale server events, I think we're doing mostly fine. It's cool that the council does get involved with larger events every now and then, but we have an OOC event team to handle the bulk of them.
The council has identical FearRP to the faculty, according to Rule 5.6A. You follow the 3 warning rule (described in this official guide), after which they must FearRP or it is considered FailRP. Delinquent students don't get any perms on councilors for doing their job, so it is entirely the councilor's decision whether they allow their character to be assaulted or not.
This is half correct. People who want to do disciplinary roleplay with delinquents will stop applying for council, and would instead would try to become a prefect. Assuming the council adopts more responsibilities to replace what they've lost, there would be plenty of new reason for players to apply for the student council. Don't think of it as the council losing its identity, but rather as the council changing its identity. The council wouldn't lose anything, it would just be shifting its focus onto different things.
Prefects are meant to be hall monitors, in addition to acting as model students; I am aware of this fact, but the reason I made this suggestion was because I wanted to change things. I think prefects could contribute more to the server than just being good students and reporting bad ones, which is why I am suggesting they should be given more authority.
Additionally, I know and understand all the current responsibilities and limits of the student council, since I've been a part of it for over two years; my goal here is to change that, in the hopes it will provide more unique roleplay opportunities for councilors that otherwise aren't done at the moment.
In regards to my usage of the word "counselling," I am aware that there are official school counsellors, and I am not saying that students take over this role; rather, I am saying that prefects could offer advice to delinquent students as part of their discipline, based on whatever might be causing the poor behavior. It's something I'll usually do myself if I can get some alone time with somebody in detention and they're willing to roleplay, it's pretty cool and fun (and way more meaningful than giving them a pre-made detention task).
Tutors are able to assist teachers, but it isn't something they have to do; even if that wasn't the case, there are only four slots for tutors, meaning the overlap between councilors and tutors would be minimal regardless.
In case it's brought up, I don't consider the one to three random faculty friends of the teacher loitering around in the room to be assistants. An assistant actively contributes to the activity, whereas the people I'm describing usually just show up because they're bored.
I think my weakest argument is that they could attend sports practice, and looking back I agree that it isn't a good idea; sports practices are mostly OOC (other than track, swim, and cheer), so participating in them would basically just be watching people play the sports plugin for an hour or so without doing anything else.
Other than that however, I could see every other thing I've described happening on a regular basis.
Assisting in classes is something that regular students can already do, they just don't gain any authorities that faculty have and can't do 100% of the teacher's job for them. I don't think it would be unrealistic for this to become one of the council's tasks, as it's beneficial to the teacher and gives councilors something cool to lord over the common folk.
Attending club meetings would be 100% doable, as club meetings are usually more grounded in roleplay. Regardless of anyone's opinions on the current state of the club faction and their overall activity, having councilors interact with clubs is just a great way to get roleplay going between different groups, and a great way to check in with clubs ICly on a regular basis.
"Helping students" is very vague, which was deliberate on my part; the act of helping students could vary between a million things, and there is a broad range of things which could be considered "helping students." Looking back, I wasn't clear enough; I'm not suggesting councilors run around campus to look for students that might need help, I'm saying that the council should come up with things to do which help students who might need it.
It might seem like a cop-out, but I'd rather not get into discussing every idea I have for what constitutes as "helping students." When initially creating the thread, I thought including a large section to suggest ideas for this would detract from my main idea, and I still believe this is true. Regardless, I think it would be better as a topic for discussion in one of the council's meetings, rather than in a public forum post.
Yeah, I agree. I said it in my original post, the responsibilities of the prefect role are already being covered by the council and school faculty. This is why I included my proposal for council committees that I made six months ago, because implementing it would allow for the council to have people who are dedicated to specific tasks, rather than having a group of people that just do whatever they want as long as it's vaguely council-like. In other words, people would have concrete goals to work towards, and if we went as far as introducing quotas (like every other faction in the server), things would get actually done and our activity would skyrocket. The role of "prefect" would be covered by the "disciplinary committee," who would essentially do what our prefects do now, plus what I suggested for them in this thread.
The reason this isn't my main suggestion is because I don't think it's completely impossible for prefects and the council to exist separately, and also because prefects are a very new role. I do think there is benefit in having prefects be their own separate thing, and outright shutting it down because it has a rough start would be a bit much.
If you told me which option I would prefer, it would be to keep everything as part of the council, and give prefects their own dedicated responsibilities within the council (like I listed in my proposal document).
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