Bethesda Chevy Chase high school is losing color and we need to be alarmed. B-CC recently painted the interior of the school white. Replacing the school’s ‘signature mud brown’ with pure white. While seemingly a simple change, this repainting impacts all B-CC students and drastically harms schoolwide mental health.
MCPS and B-CC have continually emphasized student and staff wellbeing, bringing service dogs in once a week and holding mental health awareness week. The school’s stated values do not match its practices. By removing the vibrancy that makes our school special, the administration is making it difficult for both students and staff to thrive. Color is being erased in many facets of our culture from interior design, fashion, movies, cars, and commercial spaces. This has been proven to hurt people’s mental health. Different colors have been proven to boost your mood and performance. According to the mental health site VeryWellMind “research indicates that certain colors may be associated with differences in performance under specific conditions.”
VeryWellMind also described white (the color B-CC picked to paint the walls) as “cold, bland, and sterile. Rooms painted entirely white can seem spacious but empty and unwelcoming. Hospitals often use white sheets, towels, and walls to create a sense of sterility.”
According to a scientific study conducted about the impacts of color in classrooms by the Institute for Research and Innovation in Bioengineering at the Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain, they found that “White spaces may produce poorer performance… These spaces have been associated with a 25% drop in human efficiency, and an increase in 22% in distraction. Hence, these colours may not be the best option.” They also found that “it has been shown that coloured spaces are associated with the committing of fewer errors in proofreading tasks and higher task execution speeds.”
This repainting of B-CC risks alienating students and making their school seem unwelcoming. Students and teachers have described the repainting as deeply alarming Junior Madison Fetrow said, “When I saw {the repainting}, I was really sad, because I thought it made the hallways look like a mental hospital…I liked it when there was more color…It just makes the school environment feel more like closed off and like less happy.”
Teachers at B-CC have raised concerns with the repainting. Dr. Hogewood, who teaches AP United States History and comparative religion remarked, “We were disappointed to hear that it was going to be all white. We, I mean teachers who I’m speaking with, it seems like they’re making it more sterile, more institutional, rather than more colorful and beautiful, which is unfortunate…Teachers are equally not happy about that.”
Other teachers at B-CC have also questioned the repainting. AP Language teacher Mrs. Kopolwitz said, “I wrote an article in college for my college senior capstone class about how if walls were boring then people wouldn’t come. So I suggested painting the walls red…I do think that the physical environment has a huge impact on kids.”
The head of the repainting effort at B-CC Miguel Amaro has not responded to a request for an interview via email and when asked in person, said he did not have the time.
This sentiment among staff and students seems to be largely universal. B-CC must consider the impacts of wall color on students’ mental health and performance in school. Completely ignoring the impacts of this white painting directly hurts B-CCs effort to support student and staff mental health.
