Boston University Academy's Student Council Created an FBI and a CIA

The Federal Bureau of Intrepids. Nobody had to clear their browser history. They just had to pick a color.

Every member of the school was assigned to a color team at the first all-school meeting of the year. Points could be earned all year, toward Field Day in May, for sports, clubs, achievements and participation. The kickoff was a Balloon Pop, with a senior representative from each team on stage. Later all-school meetings were taken over for musical chairs, a riff-off, an arm-wrestling tournament, a Halloween runway show and the Newlywed Game. There was also a pep rally and an Underdog Dodgeball game.

The head of school, Chris Kolovos, wrote that spring that the FBI involved eight color teams mixing all four grades, that its all-school meetings had been "highpoints of the year," and that he hoped the bureau would still be "going strong" when the class of 2024 came back for its tenth reunion.

A head of school hoping that a student joke outlives him is the warmest thing an institution can say. Our family jokes have a life span of about one dinner, unless the middle one makes them, in which case they last forever and are about me.

The council's report then moves, with a straight face, to its more serious work. The study room known as the QSR had, the president wrote, "historically been quite noisy." So the council rebranded it the CIA: the Considerate Independent study Area.

The FBI was for noise. The CIA was for quiet. Between them, a student council covered the whole emotional range of a high school.

The president's farewell note in the report summed up the year in the language of the school mascot. Her fellow Terriers, she wrote, had "barked up new trees and dug new holes."

I have tried to establish agencies at home. The breakfast table is now the Department of Not Talking Until Coffee. Its sole agent is me, and I have been overruled every morning by the youngest, who has founded the Ministry of Questions, and has more staff.