The year of 2026 marks the fourth year that Communio has been a thing at Saint Thomas High School. While still being a relatively new thing in the school, Communio is a weekly event that happens every Thursday and has the students come together in their designated Communios. Determined by their House Leaders, the groups fellowship whether they be games outside, in the gym, or even wellness talks and videos that promote ideas of brotherhood and making the right decisions. Overall, the idea for Communio is to connect all grades of Eagles together so that the brotherhood and bond between everyone can grow stronger and so that the proper lessons and things a Man of St. Thomas should know can be taught.
Communio though, as it is still in its beginning stages, has many ways it can improve, and the best way to do that is to hear what students think about Communio and how they would like to see it improve.
“I think that Communio has a lot of potential, but it can be executed very poorly a lot of the times so I don’t really like it now, but when we do something like the house tournaments it ends up being really fun” said Patrick Daily. Daily, a senior, has had Communio the whole time he has been at St. Thomas so he has a lot of experience with Communio. Many students also highly enjoy the house tournaments and look forward to those things when Thursday Communio comes around.
“I like Communio because it can be fun sometimes and I have friends in my Communio, but the big thing I don’t like is that I sometimes have some school assignments that I have left off to do during what is usually community time, but I can’t since it is Communio, so that is definitely a downside” said junior Henry Sherman.
Many students have the same mentality as Sherman and it is understandable since most seem to believe that Communio is enjoyable when they are not worried about an assignment they had planned to do in that period of time.
“It is more fun when it is an all Communio event. When we sit in the classroom in our own Communio’s it is pretty boring and I don’t like it and I personally am just there waiting for the time to pass by. When we go downstairs to the gym though and all the Communios come together and we do a big competition or event it is super fun in my opinion so if we were to do more of those I would really enjoy it more than the normal Communio we do,” Barret Bayne said.
Many students enjoy whenever there is a House competition in which all the students and Communios come together to compete for house points in hopes of being the house champions in the future.
“I would rather do homework or hang out with my friends than go to Communio in all honesty,” said Matthew Baumeister.
Baumeister and a majority of students think the same way. It seems that the problem is that Communio is not as entertaining and consumes time they could use in ways they believe are more useful.
“I just wish Communio would be a bit more fun and that we played some sports more often,” Baumeister said.
While the goal of Communio is to strengthen the brotherhood across all grades, how it is executed and done has not fully won over the students of Saint Thomas High School. Many students very much like the large competitive house tournaments but do not like the small, classroom sessions since most students view the time used for that to be a missed opportunity to hang out with friends or an obstacle when they want to do some work. If the administration wants Communio to have the intended effect, they must listen to the students’ opinions.
By doing more frequent, all-Communio events that makes sure that the students enjoy Communio and grow to love it to where students are filled with anticipation for the event.
