Behavioral standards get makeover to leverage specificity in new year

The Wildcat Way has gotten a district-mandated upgrade. For the beginning of this school year, the Oshkosh Area School District (OASD) replaced its expectations of Respect, Responsibility, and Safety with four new expectations: Integrity, Safety, Excellence, and Engagement. This new change applies to students and staff alike, and these new standards are more catered to the traits the district wants students to represent. 

Junior Caiden Kim appreciates the specificity compared to past expectations. After previously operating under vague, outdated standards, he is able to understand what is expected.

“I do like the change because they’re making it into more of a focused effort, specifically targeting issues that they saw last year, apart from the generic ‘respect, responsibility, and safety’ that pretty much all schools have,” he said.

All of the values have their importance, but Kim personally views safety as being the most important. Feeling secure in a learning environment is the only way that academic achievement can occur.

“Out of all of the new expectations, I think that safety is the one that students should uphold the most,” he said. “We’re not perfect, of course, but overall as a school, we definitely don't have as many incidents as we’ve seen in the past.”

Junior Broderick Enli has a different outlook, as he sees integrity as the common thread connecting all the other values together.

“It’s hard to have a lot of these other values, such as excellence, without having integrity,” he said.

Senior Autumn Bowers agrees, emphasizing academic honesty in an ever-changing modern world.

“With how common AI and cheating has started to get, it definitely is becoming more important to be a person with integrity, and it’s not going to be any easier for the people who already have that sense of integrity,” she said.

Enli also sees excellence as important. He finds it to be applicable to every aspect of school life.

“Excellence is definitely up to interpretation, and a large way that excellence has been described is putting in effort for school and I think it can be more broad as caring about education, which is difficult to communicate to students,” he said. “It can mean excellence, not only in performance at school, but also in other areas where it overlaps with engagement. Being an excellent student means showing up and caring.”

Kim worries about differences in the way students understand these rules, despite homeroom activities designed in hopes of explaining their meaning.

“I don’t think these expectations will be interpreted the same amongst students and teachers because I think the trade off with going more specific with our expectations is that the broader terms were definitely easier to interpret because everyone had the same idea of what they were,” he said. “Now that they’ve gotten more specific, it could have entirely different meanings for two people.”

Another concern for Kim is a general sense of apathy towards the change. 

“I think most people are going to largely ignore this change, but for those who actually do pay attention to it, I guess it does feel like it will improve our standards in some of those categories, just once students get it in their heads,” he said.

Junior Gavin Nimmer feels that this change is good, even if only minor. 

“The expectations are basically the same; they expect similar things from the students, but people definitely aren’t affected, because they really haven’t changed all too much,” he said.

Kim ultimately believes that the only thing that these new expectations need is time. Once the adjustment has occurred, then students will thrive with these expectations as guidance.

“The expectations need a little more time to settle,” he said. “I don't think it will be too big of a challenge to remember and uphold once we are used to it.”

Students like senior Max Thiemke view the change as a chance for growth. As they grow up, so should the expectations placed on them.

“I think the new expectations are a great graduation from elementary and middle school expectations, as course rigors and classes increase inside of school, and students near adulthood, it only makes sense that the rules should follow suit,” he said.

by Milo Kasubaski

Published October 5, 2026

Oshkosh West Index Volume 123 Issue 1