It’s the end of August and you are starting a new school year, prepared to catch up about the summer with your peers. You ask your friends about their summer. They shrug and say, “Nothing, I just relaxed.” But you stumble upon their LinkedIn page that unveil the true story: three summer programs attended, five service organizations joined, and a full-ride scholarship earned. When confronted about their blatant lies, they admit to hiding their extracurricular activities, pleading for you not to share their secret.
At first, this personal exchange seems like a harmless practice. However, beneath the surface lies a disturbing trend: students gatekeeping extracurriculars from other students to gain a competitive edge. This practice weakens our community by dismantling relationships and fosters a toxic culture.
In the context of school, gatekeeping is used to describe when students try to control who can access information about extracurricular opportunities by being untruthful when discussing available extracurricular activities. The practice of gatekeeping has come from students who feel the need to conceal knowledge about some of their activities. By keeping the opportunities under wraps, students feel they are setting themselves up for success when universities compare them to their peers. However, the slight edge students think they have when gatekeeping is minimal in comparison to the detrimental effect it can have on friendships.
The phrase “honesty is the best policy” has been taught to us since childhood, in an attempt to foster a society where people can develop strong relationships by being honest with each other. But as we have gone through years of schooling and begun to see our friends and peers as direct competition. Students seem to be increasingly out of touch with this expression, losing the value of honesty in favor of personal advantages.
Honesty fosters a more inclusive community with people feeling comfortable with one another, so when competition takes precedence over connection, we risk losing the very relationships that keep us grounded. High school is challenging enough without sabotaging our own support systems by gatekeeping. Breakups, bad test scores, and social drama are all normal in a typical high school experience, but strong friendships help students work through issues that may arise. According to a survey done by Newport Academy, a teen treatment and recovery center, teens cope better after a stressful event when they are with peers rather than adults, reporting lower levels of sadness, jealousy, and worry.
Relationships rely on a key driving factor to remain intact: trust. When people start to doubt how truthful the conversations they are having are, the honest friendship that has been built up for years is shattered. More specifically, a study by the University of Connecticut suggests that dissolution among teens is extremely common, reported by 86% of a sample, that states that conflict or betrayal is the most common reason for friendship dissolution.
Moreover, in a school setting, thinking of classmates as competition to get ahead of them, and not for relationships, can be detrimental to students’ mental health as it can become harder for students to distinguish who can be trusted or not with sharing their personal lives. The additional harmful effects of a lost friendship are explained by a study by Progressive Way Therapy, a therapy business set in Texas, that explained that the loss of a friend can leave them in a void of sadness, loneliness, and even depression.
If this problem of people hiding parts of their academic lives from others isn’t addressed now, we risk setting ourselves up for an impersonal future where people are too scared to reveal parts of their life that they believe help them succeed, placing their mental health at stake. As we go through life, more opportunities exist where we have to shine ahead of other people and if not properly addressed, people could be inclined to gatekeep all parts of their lives. We don’t want to break the honesty and respect for one another that has previously been a standard practice in America.
Additionally, by keeping certain clubs behind the curtain from other “competitors”, we limit the effectiveness and achievements of clubs at Stevenson. For example, if someone is part of a competitive club on a “varsity roster”, they might be less inclined to let others know about the club in fear of losing their prized roster position. However, the problem lies where these clubs lose the possibility of improving the team by experiencing decreased outreach opportunities. We inadvertently let our clubs down by decreasing the awareness of these teams, limiting opportunities for improvement.
At the root of the problem, we can see that gatekeeping comes as a result of the competitive nature of the Stevenson environment. Students should be impressing admissions officers through honest, exceptional work that reflects their dedication, hard work, and passion, not by hiding parts of their lives. As students reflect on their ways of sharing their achievements, they should understand the true consequences of gatekeeping extracurriculars for the sole purpose of gaining a small edge over their peers. It is truly devastating that our community’s competitiveness has reached a point where we do not allow academic and extracurricular success to coincide with personal freedom.