Some like it, some hate it, some are completely neutral towards it, but quite a few don’t understand why we have it. Wellness hours could certainly said to be a controversy among the student body here at MSMS.

In the MSMS 2016-2017 handbook, one of the only things said about wellness is that it “requires each student to participate in a minimum number of physical activity hours and minimum attendance in wellness seminars”(Page 51). There is never a point in the handbook where the exact reasoning for having wellness is explained, so it’s understandable why some students might be confused about why we have a wellness requirement.

The basic reason for wellness is obvious, to make sure students are getting an adequate amount of exercise time. It is a well known fact that exercising has lots of positive benefits including reducing stress, controlling weight, preventing disease, and improving mood thus it make sense students are required to exercise. Still, some students question if it is really fair to force students to tally down the hours and minutes they spend exercising as if they can not be trusted to exercise of their own accord. When asked about this, Briana Johnston said, “Yeah we need wellness, because I know a lot of kids who wouldn’t do anything without it. However, I know a lot of kids who abuse it, but at least it gets them out of there room so I guess that’s the positive to that.”

While Briana certainly has a positive view of wellness, others do not. One student, who has asked to remain anonymous, said “Wellness is essentially enforced labor that can’t be enforced to actually be sure how good it is for us. There are much better ways to encourage healthiness and wellbeing rather than essentially monetizing how much time we spend doing activities that may or may or not actually be healthy so we can get earned privileges. For instance one student could go to stark and play video games for two hours while another may go on a energy intensive run for 30 minutes, but the first student would have more wellness hours”. In a similar vein, Anna Smith commented “I think it should be weighted differently. Instead of by minutes, it should be by what you are doing. For instance I run, which is a lot tougher than going to Stark and playing pool.”

Clearly there are opposing views on wellness among the student body. On the bright side, however, changes in wellness have made it more popular with the students even just within the past year. Senior Bri Lancaster said, “Although at the beginning of this year, I thought that the change is wellness was generally bad, I’ve noticed now that it’s a lot easier because you don’t have to get a whole two hours in a single week as it’s just cumulative now.”