On a rainy Tuesday, a sudden burst of static emanates from a walkie-talkie, shattering the tranquility of NKHS’s near-empty Media Center. “Hello,” an anonymous, scratchy voice says, “we have three students in the upper loft of the auditorium doing…things that they shouldn’t be doing.” Abruptly, the eyes of Ms. Tara Walsh, dean of grades 9-11, snap upward towards her counterpart, Ms. Rebecca Kane, dean of grades 10-12. “I’ll take care of it,” says Kane, apologizing for having to leave the interview at such a short notice. Kane departs the media center, as Walsh assures her that she’ll be up shortly to help survey the damage.

The dean system at NKHS was adopted three years ago, after a change in the RI State Department of Education’s teacher evaluation requirements. Under the new requirements, principals and assistant principals must evaluate the teaching and guidance staff of schools multiple times per year, leaving little room for them to handle student discipline. To support the needs of students at NKHS, the school switched to what Principal Dr. Thomas Kenworthy calls “the dean model” in 2010.

“We could be tied up for hours at a time in meetings, but we know that we have these two individuals who are helping to help the building running on a regular basis, and that’s really valuable to us,” said Kenworthy.

However, as of late, students at NKHS are buzzing about Kane, Walsh, and their disciplinary styles, while sometimes remaining unsure of exactly what the two have been put in place to do. Spirit week, in particular, was a time of concern for students and deans alike, in terms of dress code and other student-perpetrated violations. Such violations were the subject of chatter for many NKHS students across grade levels, and caused some students to question the methodology of the disciplinarians.

Kane and Walsh are aware of these qualms, yet stand firm in their duties to uphold the policies outlined in the NKHS student handbook.

“We don’t make these rules, we enforce the rules. Often, I think, kids get mad for us coming down on them. But we always say to students, well, ‘you made the choice,’, so it is always about the choice that the student made,” said Walsh. “We are now just putting down the consequence for that choice, and it’s there, it’s in the handbook.”

Junior Miranda Johnson said that she realized “some kids at school can dress extremely inappropriately,” but wondered why “sometimes the people who get called out are the kids where this is their first time wearing something small to school.” Kane and Walsh drew attention first and foremost to the fact that spirit week is, as Walsh said, “not an excuse to violate the dress code.”

“It was said beforehand; ‘make sure that you dress appropriately for spirit week,’” said Walsh, adding that “it’s the freedom, the going outside of what normally happens” which makes spirit week a time notorious for violations. Kane also said, “[I] dealt with a lot of senior girls during lunchtime that I don’t normally have any issue with at all.”

Still, junior Devan Phillips stated that she felt the deans can be “off-putting,” and wondered why, “If a girl shows her back, all hell breaks loose.”

Regarding student attire, Kane and Walsh both seemed to agree that the codes are in place to prepare students for their futures outside of NKHS. “Our responsibility as adults is to make you aware of the time and the place,” said Walsh. “Because, if you dress like that for a job interview, you’re not likely to get the job.”

Kane added to the statement, stressing the fact that, “as an adult,”, she is “not judging you off of what you wear.”

Kane also said that “it would make it a lot easier on the kids who usually don’t get in trouble when we say ‘you need to cover up,’, if they covered up. My problem is, if I tell you to do something, and you don’t do it, then yes, I’m coming back, that’s my job.”

Kane also said “our role, our job, doesn’t change during spirit week, you know, we’re still expected to enforce the rules.”

Despite this knowledge, some students seem to believe that the dean model isn’t acting in the best interest of students. “The deans can be really aggressive sometimes,” says junior Amelia Bowen.

Senior Jodie Wadovick, whose experience during spirit week was overall “a blast”, said that “personally, on class day I was yelled at for having an open back dress. It was not completely open, there was a bow covering where my bra would lie. I understand that it is inappropriate to show my bra, even though it’s not a secret that ladies wear bras…but it was covered by my dress.”

Walsh commented on this general issue, saying that “it’s distracting, you know, you’re not out at the club, you’re not out at the beach, you’re in school,” although she stressed that the violations are “typical teenage behavior” and that “part of [the styles of clothing worn to school] are a trend, and part of it is students trying to figure out where everybody fits.”

“You guys are typical teenagers…you don’t necessarily see a year from now, you see tomorrow, or tonight,” said Walsh, adding that any student who felt particularly called out during the week was merely “targeted only because they were dressed inappropriately.”

In terms of the manner of discipline at NKHS, the deans acknowledge that they can be, as Kane said, “Very sarcastic.” Kane also said, “Sometimes kids that we don’t deal with on a daily basis don’t get our sarcasm and the way that we act, and they see our sarcasm as being very rude and disrespectful.”

Though Walsh said that their sarcasm and manner of dealing with students is “part of our nature”, she was backed up by Kane, who admitted that the two “need to do a better job of determining who we’re sarcastic with and who we’re not.”

“We don’t sugarcoat things. We sure as heck don’t beat around the bush,” said Walsh.

Yet despite dress code disasters, precarious parking jobs, detention ditchers, and the occasional pair of fighting freshman, both deans agreed that they enjoy their posts thoroughly.          “We like our job. And when people say that we’re being, for lack of a better word, bitchy, that’s part of it. Of course you’re going to see the person who doles out the consequences as being bitchy, or as being not nice. But there is another side to us too, you know, our door is constantly open,” Walsh said.

Both deans emphasize that they would “gladly sit down and have a conversation with students who have questions and want to understand why things are the way they are,” although, as Kane said, both deans and the NKHS administration as a whole “expect them to be respectful of what we give them.”

And the next time that students are smoking in the costume loft, skipping class, or violating the dress code, Kane and Walsh will most likely remind them that, “we are very lenient, and I think that’s what’s a little frustrating too, because we give you guys a lot,” and that students should “stick within the guidelines because they are probably some of the most lenient we could have.”