The freshmen mentorship program, LinkCrew, is one of the numerous programs offered for students at Roosevelt High School. Rider Crew, otherwise known as LinkCrew, is a “national high school transition program” which helps welcome incoming freshmen and support them throughout their first year of high school.
Roosevelt’s LinkCrew has been present in numerous prior years. This year however, the program format was forced to evolve due to various events taking place near the beginning of the school year.
David Grosskopf, language arts department chair and co-lead of LinkCrew says that there was a common interest in addressing the culture at Roosevelt which permeated its history as well as working to build a community and inclusive culture for freshmen.
Amidst the transition back to in-person learning, LinkCrew mentors and planners continued to uphold the program’s testament to community building, and regularly met with freshmen throughout the beginning of the school year. However, the program came to a standstill when an announcement was made on Feb. 9, that LinkCrew would not be continuing in the second semester of the 2021-22 school year.
Senior Audrey Hendriques, LinkCrew mentor and planner, states that as the year progressed, freshmen didn’t seem to need as much help as they began to settle into individual friend groups.
Grosskopf elaborates on this decision, “We were looking forward to having live meetings with people, but there ended up being new problems in this year that we hadn’t anticipated. And because of COVID, we couldn’t eat together, which would have been really good community bonding. We ended up having these really squished meetings [and] connections weren’t really well-established; it was a pain for the ninth graders to have to go to them and it was a pain for their mentors too.”
Though the LinkCrew program has remained paused until the next school year, there was much intrigue and curiosity surrounding LinkCrew meeting topics. For example, following the White Student Union Instagram account that targeted Black students and threatened violence in November, LinkCrew held a meeting to provide a space for student emotions. Freshman Chase Guyton recounts this experience, “On my end, I was one of the people that got targeted, so it affected me as a whole, like it kind of just messed with me a little. So that sucked, but I guess talking about it made it better because we talked about it there and we also talked about it in classrooms as well.”
In response to the official end of LinkCrew meetings, Guyton notes on the potential for future development in the program: “From a freshman’s perspective, I would like to see more freshmen going.” In addition to attendance, Guyton notes on meeting topics as well, “I think talking about a bit more like, problems going on with Roosevelt at the time could’ve helped maybe; I guess talking about like drug usage, stuff like that.”
Junior and student leader of LinkCrew, Ellie Monahan says, “We just wanna create a community at Roosevelt that is open to everyone and gives everyone a place, especially if they don’t have a place to inherently get tips.”
Grosskopf states “Everybody has put a lot of heart into this and I’m sorry that this year threw so many complications at us in a lot of different ways, but I think we’re worth it.”
