Each year seniors at DGS create a class-wide group chat to plan out all things related to senior year. Out of the 658 students in the class of 2025, there are around 350 that joined the GroupMe.

This year, senior Kate Dziewinski took it upon herself to run the group chat. The main goal of the chat is to plan the many traditions that DGS Seniors take part in.

“I hope we can plan activities for most of us to do. We’ve had the banner with all the seniors that sign their names. With that having been a thing a bunch of teachers have come up to us about it and were like, ‘We love it.’ And then planning stuff for spirit week and when to wear senior shirts,” Dziewinski said.

This planning has led seniors to feel more connected within their grade. It also has given them the ability to collaborate with students in their grade whom they may never have talked to prior. Activities Director Jennifer Martinez spoke on the benefits she sees from this communication platform.

“I think it’s great that students have a form of technology that supports them to communicate with one another so that all the seniors can lean in and talk about all the things that they might want to talk about as a senior class,” Martinez said.

Martinez added that another positive of GroupMe is that seniors would be able to use their creativity to plan activities that don’t just involve the class of 2025 but the whole school.

“The senior group chat can allow students to generate an idea and then be able to collaborate with the school officials, not only myself, but others included. And so then there’s power in that to do good things for our community,” Martinez said.

However, since there are over 300 seniors in the group chat who each have differing opinions, not everyone is going to agree. This can lead to members of the group chat not getting along as hoped. These disagreements can then turn into bigger issues and leave some students feeling like they are being cyberbullied.

“I’ve had conflicts with possible bullying in the chat. I try to delete what’s being said when that happens, but if bullying goes on in the chat or cyberbullying, and they go to a dean or a teacher it’s kind of my responsibility because on GroupMe it says I’m the admin,” Dziewinski said.

These altercations have begun to get brought onto school grounds where some members feel the group chat is doing more harm than good. Associate Principal for Operations and Technology Omar Davis talked on how the online disputes cause problems inside DGS.

“What usually happens is something that is said or created in that group or in that communication resource finds its way back into the building, and disrupts the instructional process here. If two students get into an argument because of what was said in a group, that is what we call Nexus. So when things have a nexus to being here in the building, our dean’s office is able to work through with the students and with the families if there is a conflict,” Davis said.

Even though the deans are a great support system for DGS students who are struggling, a main goal of the DGS administration is to have students step up and prevent the bullying from going too far. Martinez has high hopes that students will resolve conflict before any dean, counselor, or social worker needs to.

“If GroupMe did turn negative where there was something that shouldn’t be happening, I would hope that student leaders would step up to help smooth it out. So it doesn’t come back to us that we have to manage anything because it’s off campus, that’s not affiliated with us,” Martinez said.

Moving forward, Dziewinski explained the main goal of the chat is to plan for senior activities, so even though the countless notifications might be annoying, it needs to be used for the better.

“I don’t want everyone to mute the chat, because if we need anything important to be planned out, they won’t get the notification to look at it. So with that being an option, people mute the chat all the time, because it can get very annoying since there are some people talking in it all the time, and it just gets out of hand,” Dziewinski said.

While there have been some harmful situations to come from the senior group chat, students and staff do recognize that it should be used for good instead of bad.