By Adriana López, ’13 You walk into the dining hall, and a wave of relief washes over you as you spot a group of your friends. You quickly sit down as everyone welcomes you with smiles and laughs. If you really want to understand friend groups at Deerfield, stop, and look around. It all comes down to one thing: comfort. One of the first things people look for when making friends is similarity, whether it’s based on location, race, socio-economic class, schedule, sports, or any other interests. No one likes to feel uncomfortable, so we surround ourselves with people like us. But comfort isn’t always good. Progress doesn’t occur if everyone is comfortable. So take a risk and meet someone new. Introduce yourself to someone who doesn’t look like you or isn’t from where you’re from. By Blake O’Neal, ’15 My friend group at Deerfield is made up almost entirely of guys who do the same co-curricular that I do. Out of the five or six guys who I spend the most time with, I would say I met a solid four of them from JV football freshmen fall. While walking around the dining hall and other places on campus, I see hockey players, PG’s and swimmers in large groups. I can honestly say there are certain groups of people who I have never seen outside of their group of friends. This isn’t implying that I see them excluding others, but I do know if no one is reaching out then, it gives the appearance of exclusion. By Annie Klink, ’13 The problem is not that Deerfield students are generally ‘mean’ or ‘exclusive’; I’ve always found students here to be wonderful people. The problem, rather, is awareness. All too often, I witness the same group of kids at the same tables in the dining hall. On walk through days, it seems like we have a seating assignment. This is not the community depicted on DAnet. Through self-selection or unintentional exclusivity, the community becomes fragmented. However, I think this is easy to fix through awareness. Next time you are at the dining hall I challenge you to stop and think about who you are hanging with. By Ashley So, ’13 It’s easy to stick to one group of friends, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I don’t think the existence of “friend groups” causes a problem on campus. The problem begins when a friend group excludes or gossips about people from another group. There will definitely be those who we are super close with, and those who we never talk to at all. The key is to be open and to connect with anyone. You never know when you’ll meet that next friend. Give each person a chance. By Allie Gerber, ’14 Once you find your “friend group,” it’s hard to put yourself out there and meet new people, but that is what we need to do. Our friends are normally people whom we relate to im¬mediately, but, if we try, we can find the same similarities with someone who we would have never expected. We are lucky to have such a diverse group of students, yet we still all seem to hang with the people similar to us. Diverse halls, teams, sit down tables and classes can all help us create new friendships. We have the tools; we just need to make the effort.

An honor pledge would be a drop in the bucket of the effort needed to decrease the newly elevated levels of plagiarism at Deerfield. After many of the Academic Honor Committee cases last year, Academic Dean Peter Warsaw approached students being disciplined and asked if they thought that, given a moment before cheating where they were asked to reflect upon their personal values, they would have proceeded to break the school’s academic honor code. Students asked replied that they believed that such a moment of reflection might have altered their actions—they might never have cheated in the first place. This seems to indicate the positive effects of an honor statement. In this sense, I support the addition of a mandatory pledge, to be completed with every major assignment. If the honor statement prevents a single student from cheating, then it has a clear benefit. There aren’t, however, many among us brave enough to tell Mr. Warsaw to his face that we would have cheated, no matter what we were required to sign. The students’ words lose their value when one considers the context in which they were delivered. In addition, many cases of cheating are conscious decisions on the part of a student: a student feels he has to cheat in order to make a due date, or pass a test. The student knows he is cheating—knows it is against the honor code—yet proceeds to cheat regardless of the consequences. In these cases, the honor pledge will serve as only another place to sign your name. Though the honor pledge may not have a huge positive effect, there doesn’t seem to be any harm in instituting it. The only real negative effect it could have is if the Academy treats it as the miracle cure for academic dishonesty. We must be prepared to receive high numbers of AHC cases. While the honor pledge is a step in the right direction, it is still only a step. I’d like Deerfield to continue devising ways to inspire honesty.

I see the DC as a constructive entity. It doesn’t exist to punish or estrange students. In fact, it exists to achieve the exact opposite end: to draw the community closer together. If this seems counterintuitive, let me explain: The DC is supposed to do something else. There is an extra step. And that is to make sure the student knows not only how he broke the rule, but why breaking the rule is a bad thing to do in the first place. The DC has the responsibility, I think, to steer the student in the right direction. It can’t simply punish shortcomings without providing a new way forward for the wayward student. Regardless of how the DC is perceived, this is the end toward which I strive on the committee: that a student leaves a hearing with a heightened understanding of Deerfield’s rules and a newly strengthened respect for those rules. The AHC is striving for the same thing: not only administering punishment, but also attempting to provide an explanation to students why rules about plagiarism are important, and giving a kind of guidance as to how to be a better member of the Deerfield community. So maybe the honor pledge is a step in the right direction, towards a conscious student body that accepts the necessity of rules even just to preserve the idea of Deerfield integrity; but it might not be. It’s entirely up to the students, and how willing we are to accept this challenge to give ourselves over to what Deerfield demands of us. But what is essential, the golden key, is that the students understand why. Why to follow the rules, why respecting DA is of the utmost importance, why an honor pledge could potentially help them develop respect for the rules. Without the context, the pledge appears, as the DC does when disregarding its higher purpose to propagate DA’s integrity, to be just another twig snagged in students’ spokes as they roll through daily teenage life.

In its second year, Connect4 is presenting another year filled with events and meetings. Through the program, students are able to meet new people throughout the dorm and through sister/brother halls. Class bonding at events such as Camp Becket creates more unity within the grades. Although the intentions of the program strive to be beneficial to the student body, the Academy’s residential issues cannot be fixed by required meetings and prepared lists of questions. New required hall meetings are beginning to seem pointless and contrived due to its forced nature and excessive use around campus. The sessions themselves are one of the weaknesses of the program. In the first Connect4 meeting of the year, the subject of the session was stress. Ironically, many students came out of the meeting feeling more stressed than they did before because of the lost time and the mention of others’ stressors. A fault of the program is the emphasis on talking, not doing. Connect4 is on the right track by acknowledging issues, but without solutions to the issues, how can any goals be reached? Another reason for Connect4’s loss of appeal is due to its conflict with student schedules and clocks. Hall mates share personal moments in their own time, which makes sessions feel insincere and uncomfortable. Connect4 administrators need to realize that bringing out food and an optional meeting on a topic of conversation is all they need to get students talking. Connect4 also fails to see opportunities outside of the residential world at Deerfield. For all Connect4 says about being inclusive, where do the day students fit in? In addition, class bonding would be beneficial, as students already spend a significant amount of time on their halls.

Thanks to Anna Lu ’13, students can now volunteer down the street at Old Deerfield Nursery School from 8:30 am to 12:45 pm. Students will lead small reading groups, participate in indoor and outdoor games, and supervise the youngsters. “It really gives our preschool students an additional opportunity to be social and display pride in the school and their knowledge base,” said Aimee Zeoli, a teacher at Old Deerfield Nursery. “I would love to see student volunteers develop an appreciation for the importance of early education,” Ms. Zeoli continued. Lu sees the service opportunity as a way to ease Deerfield’s often-disputed ‘pace of life’ issue and said that helping others “might help lighten stress on students.” Head of the Community Service Board John Lee ’13 said this opportunity is “especially designed for those who have not been able to participate in service due to overlapping commitments to sports and extracurriculars.” There is no need for sign ups; students are welcome during morning free periods.

In the first two games of the soccer season, PG Claire Goss ’13 scored four goals. She had a hat trick in her first game against Milton and scored the only goal in a 1-0 win against Westminster. An Idaho native, Goss completed her junior and senior years of high school within one calendar year so she could come to Deerfield. When asked what her motivations were for coming here, Goss said, “My dad graduated from Deerfield in ’77 and my older brother took a PG year at Exeter last year. I originally wanted to apply as a repeat junior, but my coach said that Dartmouth wanted me to graduate as a 2013.” Goss started playing soccer at four years old. Starting in fifth grade, she drove two hours each direction (three times a week), to a club soccer team in Boise. Her club team, called FC Nova, won both the US Club Nationals and the National Series for soccer this past year. Goss also runs track. Though she “likes soccer more,” she is skilled at short- and mid-distance track events, such as the 200 meter, the 400 X 4 meter relay, and the 100 and 300 hurdles. Her best event is the 300 hurdles: “I ended up breaking my school record for the [300] hurdles last year. I was 0.3 seconds away from the [Idaho] state record and I was the back-to-back state champ.” She brings the same desire to excel to Deerfield. “I would love to break the Deerfield 300 hurdles record,” she said. “If I had been here to compete last year, my [300 hurdles] time would have won New Englands.” If Goss could achieve a time comparable to her split time of 58.4 seconds in the 400 X 4m relay, she could break the girls’ school record.

Often, when peers find out I’m a day student, I get the response, “Really? You don’t look like a day student.” I think that sums up how the school integrates day students into the boarding community perfectly. When people say that to me, I don’t usually say anything back (I mean, what do you say to that, “Thanks?”) but it most definitely gets me thinking about day student policies at Deerfield, and how day students are perceived and included on campus. Obviously, there is a split between the day and boarding communities. I don’t just mean mathematically, either. Socially, it’s hard to integrate yourself into the boarding community, which is the majority of the school. There are tons of weekend activities and events that happen on campus that I can’t go to on the weekends, and I often have the feeling of missing out on things with my friends. Academically, it’s hard to find times to meet with teachers for extra help, especially when activities outside of Deerfield come into the picture, which a lot of the time they do for day students. If study groups, clubs, or rehearsals meet on the weekend or after dinner, there’s a very big chance that I won’t go. I’m sure I’m not alone in pointing out these difficulties that the day community faces. For a lot of day students, coming to school takes a substantial amount time out of the day, and on top of homework and other extra-curricular activities that students participate in, it becomes a lot. In terms of inclusivity in the dorms, I feel that Deerfield doesn’t put in any effort. As a new sophomore I was lucky; I was associated with Harold Smith, which had a whole day student closet to keep things in. Since my sophomore year, however, not only have I noticed how much of a chasm there is between day and boarding students but also how difficult the school makes it to feel included in the community. It’s hard enough missing feeds and hall bonding experiences without having to stress about where I’m going to keep my things every day. In each dorm, there is no designated day student area, as at many other private schools. So I always find myself asking my friends awkwardly, “Can I keep this in your room?” and with that question comes a sense of guilt. Why? Because of the community’s attitude. I shouldn’t be made to feel guilty that I live at home, especially at a place where I take and add a lot to the community. But every time I have to ask that question, or every time I walk by a common room and see that there isn’t an area where we can put our things, I feel bad that I’m day student. I feel unwelcome. At other schools, there are things like day student rooms, even dresser-drawers for day students to use. I will admit that the DSL is a designated place to put our things; but, if Deerfield really is a community, and stresses integration of every student, why can’t the place where day students keep things be in the community, not isolated from everyone else? I shouldn’t feel guilty about living at my house. But I feel that way every day, because Deerfield does very little to accommodate its day students in an inclusive way. If the school has enough money to build a new Arts Center and a new boys’ dorm, I feel that they should have enough money to accommodate its day students, or else why have us here?

According to water polo coach Mark Scandling, most players on the boys’ varsity water polo team came to Deerfield as swimmers and learned to play water polo while they were here. Mr. Scandling has led the team to four New England titles in the past five years. “I think we can do it again,” said co-captain Sloan Damon ’13, when asked whether the team has a chance at the New England championship for a second consecutive season. After losing eight seniors last year, including two current Division 1 players (Chris Miao ’12 at Harvard and Will Grant ’12 at Santa Clara), the team is now roughly half sophomores. “We have a relatively young team,” said Mr. Scandling. Oscar Miao ’13, co-captain with Damon, is the only returning starter from last season. This season’s lineup includes Quinn Smith ’14 and Connor Sullivan ’15—both substitutes on last year’s team who gradually received more playing time as the season unfolded—as well as Hugo Marsans ’14, a new recruit. The team recently suffered an early loss (12-9) to Choate, its strongest competitor. “We are not discouraged. It is too early to tell who will be the team to beat,” Mr. Scandling said. After only a week of practice after the Choate loss, Damon said the team has made remarkable improvements on transitions from offense to defense and vice versa. Those who have never played water polo or seen it played may not know that the physical contact between opponents is extremely aggressive and often dangerous. “It can be pretty intense. Someone is always trying to drown you.” Damon said.

Alex DeVries ’15 is probably best known for his skill on ice. But few people know that DeVries has another passion: he is an equestrian. He has received a co-curricular exemption for this fall to ride at Orion Farm in South Hadley. DeVries’s interest in horses started in kindergarten, when he rode for the first time at a birthday party. “They couldn’t get me off the horse,” he joked. DeVries then started to ride on a regular basis in second grade. It wasn’t long after that before he began his career as a competitive jumper. Jumper competitions are races around a track, with time penalties when a jump is not cleared. Recently, DeVries has had some major success; he placed well in both a state competition and an international competition in Florida over the summer. Later this year, he aspires to ride in the “young riders’ competition,” a competition of top riders from across the nation. One of the major misconceptions people have about competitive horseback riding is that the horse does all the work. According to DeVries, some people believe that riding requires very little skill. “Yes, the horse does a lot of work,” he said, “but it’s the rider who has to tell the horse what to do.” It’s not necessarily the physical aspect of riding that’s the most challenging; it’s more the mental side. Reacting on impulses…it’s hard to put into words. It’s really a different feeling.” Over the summer, DeVries spent some time with Will Beck ’14, who introduced him to polo, a game played on horseback. Long wooden mallets are used to hit a small ball through two goal posts to score. DeVries said he was fascinated by the sport and hopes for the opportunity to play. “It’s basically a mix between the sports I play, hockey and horse-riding, so I really liked it a lot,” he said. Three students, DeVries, Beck, and Olivia Mehm ’14 now play polo on Sundays. Their goal for the future is to try to form a campus polo team, which would compete against other New England schools like, Groton, which has an established program.

Math teacher Carmel Schettino has been researching gender equity and its role in math education for her Ph.D from SUNY Albany (State University of New York) since 2004. In the past five years, she has been involved in a handful of gender equity projects, including one that was funded by a federal grant from the Women’s Education Equality Act. Ms. Schettino specializes in gender equity in academic environments. She has taught at an all-girls school and another co-ed school and has found that, in a same-sex environment, girls’ attitudes toward math and education are different than in a co-ed environment. “While there are some girls that thrive in a co-ed environment, research shows that in an all-girls environment, there’s more freedom to be open about learning,” Ms. Schettino said. As a part of her dissertation, Ms. Schettino conducted research on “the attitudes of adolescent girls towards learning mathematics in ‘problem-based learning,’” she said. While she also studied how girls react to other school subjects, her specialty and interest is in mathematics. “In every discipline there is a part that is skill-based,” she said. “But in each of those disciplines there’s also this creative part.” She believes if math were taught with equal amounts of skill-based learning and creative problem-solving, girls would enjoy and study it more. Nina Sola ’13 was given the opportunity to work with Ms. Schettino on a research project last winter when she took a math exemption. The study was based on work done by feminist psychologist Carol Gilligan and explored the effectiveness of the Harkness method in a math class. Students were given a set of problems without previous instruction and told to solve through discussion with their classmates. This was designed to combine the analytical and creative side of problem solving. At Deerfield, Ms. Schettino said she has found girls are just as interested in learning as boys in her classes. She has also noticed that more girls are taking high-level math courses than before. Ms. Schettino hopes this interest influences more girls to participate in the math club, which she heads.

Abby Cacho ’13, Elizabeth Perez ’13 , and Sabrina Zaldaña ’13 are three of many Deerfield students who traveled outside the country for their junior year. Cacho and Zaldaña spent the course of last year living in Rennes, a city in northwestern France, about five hours from Paris, while Perez lived in Zaragoza, Spain. All SYA students live with a host family for the year. “From the beginning, we connected.” Zaldaña said. “They were very open about everything. They were my family and treated me like their own kid, and there was no exception to that.” She had two little brothers, ages seven and twelve, and a mother and father. She said the home stay was by far her favorite part of the experience. “We definitely argued, but then we would cry together and laugh together,” Zaldaña said. “It was all part of growing together as a family. They would be my first reason to go back to France.” The SYA program offers students many opportunities for independent travel. Zaldaña traveled to Barcelona and all over France. “My group had a saying when we went to Paris on Valentine’s Day,” she said. “We were in the City of Love, on the day of love, hopefully with the person we loved.” Cacho loved the traveling because she built friendships with the other students. “We were all foreigners and the French was hard. So by May, we could not have been closer because of all the travel we did together.” The most surprising part for Zaldaña was the intensity of the school week. She woke up at 5:30 a.m. to catch the bus to school. Classes began at 8:10 and ended at six on certain days. She came home at 10, ate dinner, and completed eight subjects of homework. Six out of her eight subjects were taught in French. The education system was also a difficult part for Cacho. “They have a much different learning style than we do at Deerfield. It was very lecture-based and didn’t allow much discussion. Having attended Deerfield, I have learned always to speak my mind, but in France, it’s definitely a different system where they talk at you rather than with you.” She recommended every student take a school year abroad. “A lot of people are scared to do it because they will miss out on a whole year of Deerfield,” she said. “You don’t miss out on anything. You gain more and come back a better person.” Perez, who went to Zaragoza, Spain, said, “I wouldn’t say it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity because you can do it in college, but having that experience in high school is amazing.” Perez added, “But it is for a certain type of person. I would recommend really being comfortable with yourself and knowing your place before if you go.”

The Deerfield Rhapso- D’s petitioned to end their chorus requirement earlier this year, arguing the two-year chorus prerequisite and Sunday rehearsals created scheduling conflicts and undermined pace of life. “Allowing room for Chorus 5th period restricts a student from pursuing other academic classes,” the petition read. “Acappella should be a means for students to express themselves musically without the burden of a scheduled class.” The new requirement states every a cappella singer must take at least two years of chorus (or another yearlong music course) and rehearse with the Deerfield Choral Society for an hour and a half on Sundays. Elena Jones ’14 dropped science altogether to stay in Rhapso-Ds. She wanted to take AP Biology or Anatomy and Physiology, but could not since she needed to take chorus. On the other hand, Travis Russell ’14, who was supposed to be a leader of the Mellow-D’s this year, dropped out of the group because he could not fit chorus into his schedule. “I wouldn’t be able to pursue my academic goals to the best of my ability if I did not have a free in my academic day,” Russell said. “So I had to choose academics over my love for singing, because, at the end of the day, my top priority at Deerfield is academics.” Some Rhapso-D’s were reluctant to devote 205 minutes to chorus weekly, especially a portion of their Sundays. “Sundays are the only days students truly have to themselves,” Annie Blau ’13 said. “We use the rest of the day to either do homework or to relax, but with the new requirement, our day is shortened.” “We’re trying to be sensitive to students and their time, yet balancing,” said Daniel Roihl, director of music. “There has always been some expectation that members of the a cappella group, originally students in chorus who wanted to do something more, would be in chorus. In fact, the groups were originally faculty-led ensembles.” The Rhapso-D’s proposed to limit the chorus requirement to one year instead of two. “The sightreading portion of chorus has been helpful, but one year is sufficient to build the necessary skills one needs to contribute well to the group,” Emma Witherington ’13 said. They also argued that acappella groups were “student-run clubs.” “While we receive help from Mr. Van Eps who writes our musical arrangements, the bulk of the work falls on the students who work together to collaborate, rehearse and perform,” the petition read. Mr. Roihl responded that the relationship the groups have with the music department is special to Deerfield. “There is a big level of involvement from the faculty that isn’t present in many other schools,” he said. “This is partially responsible for the quality of the program and is something that should be preserved.” “Although the petition presented the students’ concerns compellingly, we decided to stick to the requirement Mr. Roihl introduced this year,” Head of School Margarita Curtis said. “While we are well aware of the difficult choices that students have to make, we also want to ensure quality in the Music Department. It’s a way that the most talented singers can give back to the community—we want to make sure our music program isn’t weak.” Though the school has not accepted the petition, Dr. Curtis explained that it raises problems about pace and scheduling. “We are certainly considering potential changes,” she said.