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by Jacob Cox
Up until last year, more half of the students at NS had been enrolled in seminary, but now those numbers have dropped below 50 percent for the last two years.
Currently, only around only 42 percent of the school’s students are enrolled in seminary, and around 55 percent of the students who are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are actually attending seminary.
While the percentages have dropped, the total number of students in seminary has fluctuated quite a bit over the years.
“From previous years, it kind of depends,” seminary Principal Caden Anderson said. “Seminary enrollment kind of ebbs and flows. It goes up and down a lot. It’s never consistent. It could be based on the community dynamics at the time, and it can also be on the incoming classes coming in. If it’s a big class, then our enrollment goes up.”
And while it may be because of the community and because of the size of the classes coming in, why would it be so low this year when the freshmen class is so big?
“Part of the reason I feel that enrollment among the freshmen is so low right now is partly because of COVID,” Anderson said. “For example, we do a lot of recruiting with the incoming freshmen the year prior usually, and because of COVID, everyone was home, so not even bishoprics were getting out and inviting them to seminary. What we’ve found is that freshmen, the ones we’ve talked to, just didn’t even think about it. Some of them didn’t even get an invitation extended so they didn’t think much about it or put it on their schedule. And that’s not the only reason, of course, but it’s a big one for us.”
In order to help bring more students into seminary, the seminary teachers are now doing something that allows kids to come and just have fun at the seminary building during flex.
“We want seminary to be a place of belonging and make kids comfortable,” Anderson said. “We decided that we are going to have flex time activities. We’ll just have games down here like cornhole and spikeball and just fun little activities and it will be a place where students can just come and hang out during flex time so that they can come down here and feel how good it feels to be in a place that is so dedicated to God and hopefully that will make them feel welcome and make them comfortable.”
But while they have just started flex at the seminary building, what made kids want to come before?
“In the end, a big part of it was to help prepare for a mission,” said senior seminary council member Kaje Nielsen. “When you are out in the mission field, the stuff you learn in seminary is the same stuff you’re going to teach and so in a way, it’s kind of like school for a mission. But really it comes down to two things. A, if you are choosing to serve a mission you are definitely going to make time for it, and B, their parents are making them and that’s kind of the sad truth. I wish we could get kids who weren’t in there just to prepare for a mission or because their parents make them.”
And while students come because their parents make them or because they want to serve a mission, why don’t others choose to come sometimes?
“High school has changed so much in the last twenty years,” Anderson said. “When I was in high school fifteen years ago, there were a lot less options offered to students at the time. Seminary, I think, was a viable option because of the lack of options at the school. Now that schools offer more college classes and more options, it’s been an unfortunate shift to see some kids put God second and take these other classes first. But since college classes are now an option and because of work, people are deciding to do that over taking seminary. We just really wish we could get some more kids in seminary. We want them back.”
