I have been a boarder at Concord Academy since my freshman year. Over half of my CA career, I have been subject to the room check. For those who are not familiar with this term, the room check is when house parents come around your rooms and decide whether or not they think your room is clean enough. If not, they will write in a note to take your trash out or to vacuum your room. It is the day student equivalent of parents telling you to clean your room. In the times in which we endured COVID school, CA decided to temporarily do away with the room checks for boarders, a decision I believe should be, for the most part, implemented permanently into CA boarding.
Your freshman year, you get placed with a random roommate. Therefore, there is a variety of students who get placed to live together. Slobs with neat freaks, early birds with night owls, etcetera. Sure, you have the lucky ones who get a roommate their freshman year that matches their exact needs. But for the most part, freshman year roommates do not stay the same. Due to this, I think there is a lot of benefit to having a roomcheck for freshmen. It is common decency to be clean and respectful with someone you are living with, especially if you do not have similar living customs.
After your frosh year however, Annie Bailey sets to work to match boarders with people they have requested. She very clearly states that most times, best friends are not perfect matches for one another. Through the survey Annie Bailey sends, people get placed with other students who have similar living styles as them. For example, I am a really messy person, and my roommate is also really messy. We are both perfectly fine with that…but our house parents are not.
There should also be a sense of understanding within the fact that, oftentimes, mental health issues and behavioral issues make it hard for people to clean their rooms. 1.9 million kids aged 3-17 have depression, and 6.1 million kids aged 3-17 have ADHD. Students should not be penalized and forced to wake up early because they were having a bad week and were not able to clean their rooms.
I think parents often forget that messy rooms are not a bad thing. If someone is messy in their teen years, chances are they will probably be in their adult life too, and there will be no one telling them to clean their rooms once they are adults. CA boasts a lot about how boarding allows for students to get insight into what life is like in the real world, but the reality is that room checks are not the real world, and they do not help us prepare for the real world. Due to this, I believe CA should do away with room checks, at least for non-frosh.