“This past Wednesday, the annual Back to School Night (BTSN) was held,” is what I would say if there weren’t two more scheduled two weeks after it. Instead of the usual one event, this year, TJ has broken tradition and is holding three separate BTSN over the course of three weeks.

The sophomore and junior classes were grouped together for Wednesday’s BTSN, while the freshman BTSN is on Tuesday, October 10th and the senior BTSN on Wednesday, October 11th. When I first heard that it was being split up this way, I wondered why the administration would change something that wasn’t broken. But though holding only one BTSN might have worked fine in the past, this is the first school-wide event that is held after the renovation is fully complete.

As renovation has been going on for years, a lot of people are looking forward to seeing the completed school, and thus will come to BTSN, even if they aren’t interested in the classes. If everyone came at the same time, that would cause traffic congestion as well as lead to a severe lack of parking places. Having three separate days would split the visitors into manageable groups. On the other hand, having multiple BTSN means that teachers have to stay after school multiple times.

Some teachers only teach classes for IBET or HUM, so they would only have to stay for one BTSN only, but for teachers who teach multi-grade courses or teach classes for different grades, they might have to stay for more than one night. And for classes like AP Micro and Macro, which take students from all levels, the teacher would have to say for all three BTSN. Additionally, holding it on three separate nights means you would have to get about three times the student volunteers as usual.

Holding three BTSN might solve some problems, but they also produce more as well. For some, it might be too much hassle, but I feel that it is worth the effort.