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Every year, a significant number of Deerfield students participate in club sports, competitive youth sports leagues that require fees and are unaffiliated with schools. Cate Shanahan ’23 is a two-time volleyball NEPSAC champion and played on the Amatuer Athletic Union’s 2022 U18 National winning volleyball team. Ben Cook ’24, hockey player for the nationally ranked Boston Junior Bruins and starter for boys’ varsity hockey, also participates in club sports while at Deerfield. Club athletes at Deerfield experiences are affected both by their involvement in club sports and the large amounts of time they spend traveling. Shanahan flies to Indiana every weekend, spending two hours in a car ride to Boston, three hours on a flight to Indiana, and an hour driving to the hotel she stays in. On most weekends in the fall term, Cook also makes a two-hour commute each way to just outside of Marlborough, Massachusetts. This time commitment often forces students to choose between Deerfield and their club sport. In the past year, Shanahan needed to choose between her club team and the A Boogie concert in February 2022, and, in another case, the Girls’ Varsity Basketball team. In both cases she prioritized her club team, as she believes that “a tournament is a commitment for [her] and a show of devotion and commitment to the team.” On the other hand, Cook said,“It is hard if your team is not doing well because you think you are not getting the exposure to schools that you want to be getting.” Both athletes expressed a feeling of disconnect between their time with club teams and their time at Deerfield. Cook described it as having two different lives; one at Deerfield and one with his hockey team at home. Shanahan said, “It has definitely made me appreciate Deerfield on school days, because even though I have homework, I still manage to see my friends and indulge in the best parts of Deerfield.” Playing a club sport can be challenging, but there are also many benefits. Not only do club sports players have the opportunity to play their sports outside of their regular season, but they also connect with people outside of their school. Cook describes some of his favorite aspects of club hockey as being able to “get off campus and have a different environment,” and “broadening your network of people you know and [creating] a diverse variety of relationships,” he said. Shanahan appreciates “getting to improve not just in the fall [season], but all year long,” and “being able to have this great education… and also getting to be on an amazing team.” She doesn’t regret her decision to dedicate so much time to her sport, saying, “If you are really passionate about your sport, you will devote anything to it.” Though club athletes end up missing out on some Deerfield experiences, they have the opportunity to form out-of-school friendships and compete on nationally ranked teams — experiences that are well worth missing a couple of weekends on campus.

CC DesLauriers ’23 stands out in many ways. Despite her height of 4’11”, she is hard to miss on the path, characterized by a beaming smile and persistent, positive attitude. On the ice, she uses her short stature to her advantage, utilizing her remarkable speed to recover loose pucks and create chances for her team in the offensive zone. While DesLauriers has experience playing soccer, cheerleading, and dancing, hockey has been her passion since she was three years old. “I’ve actually always kind of loved hockey,” she said. “Normally, you see a lot of the younger kids crying, but my parents said I never cried when I was on the ice, and it’s been the only sport that I’ve stuck with until high school.” Growing up in the small city of St. Albans, Vermont, DesLauriers cites her biggest inspiration in the sport to be her older brother, Owen. Outside of her brother, DesLauriers has a litany of experience in the world of men’s hockey. The St. Albans native grew up playing in local elementary hockey leagues in Vermont—“Squirts.” At the age of 10, she began playing for her allboys state team, with her as an exception, a team in which she would come to make lifelong friends. DesLauriers joined the Deerfield community as a reclassed freshman during the 2019-20 school year, after meeting Deerfield Girls Varsity Hockey Head Coach Brooke Fernandez. Ms. Fernandez played collegiate hockey at St. Lawrence University, but also has experience playing in a men’s league, much like DesLauriers. DesLauriers is now the sole four-year member of the team and leads the team alongside Annie Dinges ’24. Her co-captain, Dinges, remarked, “CC always has her head up, she’s always looking around to get a pass, and looking to help her teammates out. Especially, with eleven new girls [this year], she’s been doing a lot to make sure everyone feels comfortable in the locker room, and feels welcome, and lets everyone know they can be themselves.” Ava Carvel ’25, a new sophomore on the team, added, “She’s done everything she can to show us how a player should act on and off the ice. She exemplifies Deerfield hockey always, and I admire that a lot about her.” While DesLauriers’ skill as a hockey player and proficiency as a leader may be common knowledge to those who know her, she does have some hidden truths. When asked about her pre-game routine, she said, “This sounds kind of odd, but every time I get dressed, I have to put everything left on first. I’ll put on the left sock, then right sock, then left skate, then right skate. This started probably, during Squirts, more than ten years now. And randomly this year, I needed something new, so I decided to go half-black, halfwhite on my stick [for taping].” Additionally, to get pumped up before every game, DesLauriers turns on “Dreams and Nightmares,” by Meek Mill. “Since I’ve been [at Deerfield],” DesLauriers described, “that’s been my song before every game…When they play it in the stands, my teammates are like ‘that’s your song!’” While DesLauriers has made several treasured memories on the Deerfield ice, she cites her favorite to be during the COVID-19 pandemic, when DAGVH beat Cushing Academy during their senior night, after having lost the championship the year prior. Playing alongside her in this game was Keri Cloughtery ’21, who now plays ice hockey for Boston College. Cloughtery is a player and teammate who DesLauriers holds in particularly high regard: “I was a freshman and she was a new junior, and we met at a tournament the summer before we came to Deerfield.” She said, “The second we got here, she was someone that was not only my best friend off the ice, but someone that I could always trust on the ice. And even today, if I have any issues or need advice about being a leader, I still always contact Keri.” Former teammates will face off next year when Boston College plays the University of Vermont, where DesLauriers committed to play ice hockey, prior to attending Deerfield at 14 years old. When discussing her reasons for committing to UVM, she said, “I grew up 30 minutes from UVM, and every game you got to play at [Gutterson] Fieldhouse (UVM’s ice hockey Rink) was such a huge deal. But, I’m very much a homebody and I love being home with my family. Being able to play in front of them after being away at school where not all of them can see me play every weekend is a really exciting opportunity to have.” DesLauriers’ impact on the Deerfield community and especially the DAGVH team has been incredibly significant. From inspiring leadership to breathtaking goals to gritty defense, #8 has made a name for herself over the past four years, and she’ll surely be missed next year as she looks to tear up the Hockey East Conference.

In the Hess basement, you might see a tall man walking around the practice rooms with his cello case — it’s black, with bright blue paint splatters all around. That’s Wayne Smith, one of Deerfield’s cello instructors, and he is probably hunting down one of his students for their lesson. Mr. Smith has been working as a freelance cellist since the early ’90s. He has played with many chamber ensembles, including the National Chamber Orchestra, the Philharmonic of New Jersey, and the Heidelberg Castle Festival Orchestra. He was also part of the Portland Piano Trio, and the co-founded 240 Strings, a nonprofit organization that offers free music lessons to underprivileged children. He is also the principal cellist of the Harlem Chamber Players, which he described as a “a diverse collective of musicians.” The group focuses on repertoire written by Black and female composers in order to represent “all the various parts of the American fabric,” according to Mr. Smith. A founder of the group invited him to join after noticing him busking in New York around Christmas time 10 years ago. He said that he chose to busk because he “found that it paid better than a lot of things. It’s sporadic and unpredictable, but it pays about the same as teaching, hourly wise.” After teaching at Deerfield and Amherst College for one and a half years, Mr. Smith will be leaving to join the pit orchestra of Sweeney Todd, premiering on Broadway on March 26. Mr. Smith says that what he will miss most about teaching is “the students and the opportunity to just share with each other. Just last month, one of my students at Amherst College played the Dvorak Concerto with the orchestra, and afterwards, the conductor announced that I will be leaving the faculty of Amherst to go play on Sweeney Todd, which made people clap, but made my heart sink.” Mr. Smith elaborated, “I love learning from the students and teaching the students. I love helping people find their voice, because that’s what music helped me to do. And we talk about technique, but it’s not really about that. It’s about expression, and communication, and emotion, and sharing, and being vulnerable, and all those kinds of things. So I will miss that…It suddenly makes sense why I was driving 45,000 miles a year to be able to play and teach as I was.”

On December 5th, 2022, Deerfield welcomed American writer and curator Ben Shattuck ’03 to campus. In the Elizabeth Wachsman Concert Hall, Shattuck read short excerpts from his book Six Walks: In the Footsteps of Henry David Thoreau and visited select English classes the next day. Shattuck, who studied Henry David Thoreau as a student at Deerfield, offered to visit the Academy because he feels that his book is relevant to American literature at the high school level. After Shattuck reached out, English teacher Mr. Christian Austin connected with Deerfield’s American literature teachers to discuss Shattuck’s offer. According to Head of School John Austin, when Shattuck reached out last April, the English Department, which had been planning to incorporate transcendentalism into the curriculum, was on board right away. Mr. Austin said, “We all immediately thought this is a great reason to revive that and get transcendentalism and Henry David Thoreau back into the common curriculum for this year, especially with the opportunity to have an expert come and talk.” Thus, English teachers asked juniors to read short stories by Thoreau and other transcendentalist authors, as well as Shattuck, in the weeks leading up to his visit. Mr. Austin anticipated that it would be a great experience, but he didn’t expect that Shattuck would “[speak] so eloquently about being a student at Deerfield and his process in becoming a writer.” He added, “That just turned out to be a bonus. It could have been an event where he spoke only about Henry David Thoreau and transcendentalism.” For Six Walks, Shattuck tried to emulate Thoreau’s style of journaling. Shattuck said, “I’m so self-conscious and embarrassed by my journaling. It’s like: ‘I woke up today, had breakfast, had coffee.’ I just didn’t know what you would write. I’m not Thoreau. And he wrote so beautifully about his days, about his hours.” Shattuck had always loved writing poetry. When he came to Deerfield, he began writing more prose and loved creating pages of work, which started to become an enduring interest for him. However, at college, he studied art; busy with creating paintings, he didn’t often write creatively. His interest in writing, Shattuck said, stems from his love for reading. During high school he didn’t have much time for leisurely reading, but afterwards he developed a love for fiction books and short novels. Shattuck said, “I wanted to be a part of that club of literature. Then I just started writing. Writing short stories, researching and going into it, I wrote a lot of historical fiction.” Shattuck would go into sections of the library and find obscure facts to make stories. His time at Deerfield played an important role in Shattuck’s development as a writer. When he first arrived at the Academy, he was often homesick. He had an English teacher, Karinne Heisi, who asked everybody to write essays about their home. Shattuck said, “I remember constructing that essay and really feeling the power of written expressions and how that made me feel anchored and centered in a way that I hadn’t felt yet.” Shattuck felt destabilized by the questions he was asked himself like, “where’s my home? Where are my parents? What am I doing here? Why is it so hard?” He realized that writing can be a vessel to create stability in one’s life, adding meaning to an experience. Upon his recent return to campus, he shared that “Coming back… even as I was driving up route 91, I felt that high school nervousness, a kind of a pit in my stomach. All the feelings of adolescent anxiety came right back.” To Shattuck, writers and artists are the most important people. Shattuck said, “I think translating what everybody is feeling or creating is important.” Shattuck ended by sharing the following piece of advice: “a book is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. It’s just creating hours in the day for yourself to work on your own material to not get caught up in whatever else is going on in the world. Really carve out an individual time for you to be alone with the canvas or the page or whatever it is to hold that time sacred.”

Holmes first joined a ballet studio when she was two years old. In her sophomore year, she decided to come to Deerfield to dedicate more time to dance. She said, “I really like creating things and I feel like I have had a calling. I like how undefined dance is. I think it’s just like a really fun way to express myself.” Director of Dance Jennifer Whitcomb said, “Ana is this gem of a human being and this brilliant pre-professional dancer.” Holmes dances in various styles, including jazz, ballet, modern, contemporary, and hip-hop. Although ballet holds a special place in her heart, her favorite style of dance is contemporary. “I like [contemporary] because there’s a lot of counterbalance,” she said. “It’s really emotional, and you can tell a story through contemporary [dance].” In addition to dancing, Holmes is choreographing a contemporary group piece for the Winter Student Choreography Dance Showcase along with Natasha Steinert ’23. According to Steinert, they “chose to choreograph an emotional, hard-hitting contemporary piece.” She added, “Both of us are contemporary dancers and we both love to spice choreography up with faster combinations. Because of our similarities, we work together perfectly and haven’t faced any conflict in the choreographing process.” Steinert noticed Holmes’ dedication to dance and how that allows her to be a successful leader and dancer. Steinert said, “Ana is a very dedicated dancer and spends most of her free time in the dance studio.” Steinert elaborated on Holmes’ many strengths, addimg, “She is especially great, in my opinion, at improvisation. She is bubbly and bright, but also can be strict when she needs to be. She is compassionate and always helps other dancers around her improve themselves. As a teacher, she is not afraid to raise her voice to get things done.” Besides dancing, Holmes is also a singer. She has been a member of the Reme-D’s and Rhapso-D’s since her sophomore year, and she is currently the leader of Reme-D’s. She plays the ukulele, and before coming to Deerfield, she played the viola and the piano. Holmes said that her background in music allows her to have a better understanding of music theory and the dynamics of sound. She believes that these skills allow her to add another layer to her movement. As a senior member of Deerfield’s dance program, Holmes takes her role very seriously as she hopes to be a role model for younger dancers. Understanding the difficulty of balancing dance along with schoolwork and personal life, she checks in with her fellow dancers to help relieve their stress. “One thing we do is team dinner because I feel like that’s kind of a way that everyone can bond after dance and it is really fun,” she said. “I also try to make sure that I am checking up on the younger dancers because being at Deerfield and dancing is very strenuous.” Ms. Whitcomb testified to Holmes’ character and leadership, saying, “She’s a very strong self-advocate while looking out for the people around her. She’s a compassionate and kind person, which leads to her role as a strong leader. She’s looking out for the interests of the greater good, but she is also really capable of taking care of herself. She’s a good advocate for anything that she cares about.” Holmes will attend Middlebury College next fall, where she hopes to major or minor in dance and join an a capella group. After college, she plans to either take a gap year and tour with a contemporary dance company or go on Broadway. Holmes said, “I love dance as it allows me to be in touch with myself. When I perform on stage it gives me an adrenaline rush, but also is therapeutic at the same time. I don’t plan on ever quitting.”

The Student Thrive Survey asks students to evaluate eight facets of their well-being at Deerfield. It is an initiative pioneered by Director of Institutional Research Kelsey Naughton, aimed to accumulate cross-temporal snapshots of student well-being to track trends over time. Ms. Naughton has shared results from the 2021-2022 school year with the Scroll, which this article will present alongside some student reactions. The statement with the most students responding favorably was, “I value interacting with people whose viewpoints are different from my own,” to which 85.5% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed. Peer Counselor Isaac Bakare ’24 said, “Since Deerfield is so diverse in terms of socioeconomic standing, race, religion, nationality, you kind of have to interact with people whose viewpoints differ from your own.” On the other hand, only 47.5% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, “I feel comfortable expressing my opinions to others at Deerfield.” This statement had the least favorable responses, with the next lowest statement being, “I feel like I can be myself at Deerfield,” at 67%. Reacting to this discrepancy, Student Council Representative Preyas Sinha ’24 said, “If you value interacting with people’s different viewpoints, I’d also think that you’d be comfortable expressing your own different viewpoint.” When asked to explain students’ hesitancy to express their opinions, Sinha elaborated, “A lot of people feel that if you say the wrong opinion, you’re going to end up getting in trouble of some sort. And I don’t know how rational that is, but it’s something that a lot of people feel.” With respect to their academic experience, students reported high satisfaction. For example, 84.5% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, “I feel that the things I am learning at Deerfield are worthwhile to me as a person,” and 74.5% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, “I know how to apply my strengths to achieve my goals.” Moreover, the proportion of respondents who agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, “I feel comfortable expressing my opinions to others at Deerfield,” decreased from 52% to 43% from fall to spring term. Following a similar trend, the proportion of respondents who agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, “I feel like I can be myself at Deerfield,” decreased from 70% to 64% from fall to spring term. Bakare hypothesized that the discrepancy over time was attributable to new students changing their minds, saying, “As you spend time at Deerfield, you start feeling a compulsion to conform to a general image of what a Deerfield student should be, and that might stray away from who you perceive yourself as.” Furthermore, the data revealed a disparity in opinions between genders, as boys reported more favorable responses than girls to every statement (note: the survey results were classified according to a gender binary). The disparities were in the responses to the statement, “I feel like I belong at Deerfield,” to which 81% of boys agreed or strongly agreed, while only 68% of girls did so, and to the statement, “I feel comfortable expressing my opinions to others at Deerfield,” to which 54% of boys agreed or strongly agreed, while only 41% of girls did so. Ms. Naughton explained that the former finding was consistent with a Harvard survey, which also found that women felt a lower sense of belonging than men at their school. She elaborated, “There is much research suggesting that girls and boys in high school perceive of belonging in different ways — it is important to girls to belong in a more communal way, whereas boys feel it is important to highlight autonomy during high school.” She also noted that the latter finding was consistent with a Future of the First Amendment survey published by the Knight Foundation in May 2022, which found that girls in high school felt less free to express their opinions than boys. Asked to explain the discrepancy between boys and girls, Cornelia Streeter ’23 said, “I know a lot of other women who are afraid to express their opinions for fear of being judged. [Sometimes I wonder,] if I express my opinion, will I be attacked by others, mostly men? When I’m nervous about expressing an opinion, it’s usually not to other women—it’s to men.” Peer Counselor Emily Rice ’24 said, “I think in terms of expressing your opinions, there might be a fear of being disregarded or not taken seriously, which would displace peoples’ (specifically girls’) confidence as to how they express their views at Deerfield.” Additionally, boarding students indicated greater satisfaction with their Deerfield experience than day students, measured by every metric except one. For instance, “I feel like I can be myself at Deerfield,” to which 68% of boarding students agreed or strongly agreed. In comparison, only 55% of day students did so. Also, to the statement, “I feel like I belong at Deerfield,” 76% of boarding students agreed or strongly agreed, while only 65% of day students did so. Asked to explain this discrepancy in their sense of belonging, day student Giorgia Santore ’24 said, “You have to work harder to fit in, which doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t fit in, but you always need to be exerting an extra effort.” Upperclassmen Day Student Representative Davey Mazur ’24 said, “It’s hard to balance home and school life. You’re caught between, and you feel like you don’t have a place you can go to at Deerfield… For us, we feel like we’re imposing if we do that.” Finally, the Class of 2025 (then-freshmen) reported a higher level of ‘thriving’ than other classes according to two crucial metrics. First, to the statement, “I feel comfortable expressing my opinions to others at Deerfield,” 63% of the class of 2025 students agreed or strongly agreed compared to the school-wide average of 48%. Also, 75% of the class of 2025 agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, “I feel like I can be myself at Deerfield,” compared to the school-wide average of 67%. The Thrive Survey had a relatively high response rate—608 students, or 92% of the student body, responded in fall 2021, and 573 students, or 88% of the student body, responded in spring 2022. Despite the high response rate, some students doubted whether the survey adequately captured student well-being. Sinha said, “You just want to get the survey over with, without giving much thought … so I don’t think it’s going to be as accurate.” Similarly, Streeter said, “I think that they need to get testimonials from students,” which would be more valuable than just checking a box. Ms. Naughton declined to provide statistics aggregated by race/ ethnicity, legacy status, and financial aid status, saying that it is important to treat all Deerfield students equally, regardless of their identity and family situations. However, she said that she would consider sharing statistics aggregated by geographic region. The Thrive Survey illustrates that Deerfield has room for improvement regarding free expression and belonging, especially considering significant gaps by demographic factors, including gender, boarding status, and class year. Additional rounds of the survey are likely to further elucidate trends over time. The most recent round of the Thrive Survey was conducted in October 2022 and the next edition of the survey will be distributed in February.

Peter Melnik ’87 is the fourth generation of his family to carry on the legacy of Bar-Way Farm here in Deerfield, Massachusetts. While the local farm has been around for decades, Mr. Melnik has recently implemented changes to make the dairy farm more sustainable. Bar-Way Farms is located at the very southern end of the South Meadows, less than two miles from the Deerfield Academy campus. Mr. Melnik said that the Deerfield River Valley “has some of the best soil in the world, and so being able to grow crops in the best soil has its advantages,” which is one of the reasons why he finds his farm special. Another reason the farm means so much to Mr. Melnik is due to his familial history. His great-grandfather started a farm in East Deerfield on the opposite side of the Pocumtuck Mountain Range after immigrating from Ukraine in 1919. Initially, the family grew crops such as tobacco, onions, and cucumbers and raised EMI TAKEGAMI Associate Editor a few cows on the farm. Since then, the farm has been passed down from father to son through several generations. While the original farm began with twenty acres, Mr. Melnik and his team now maintain 750 acres, 700 of which are for the dairy cows that are all handled by four family members and four employees. When responsibility for the farm fell into the hands of Mr. Melnik’s grandfather, he decided to make the change to focus more on dairy cows. Mr. Melnik and his father took on the task and continued his wishes of a growing dairy farm. Mr. Melnik said, “I always wanted to [take over the farm],” and recalled his own experience attending the Academy when he would wake up before classes to work with his father on the farm. He said the farm has “[taken] on a life of its own” due to its longstanding family history and because “everyone that is part of the farm adds a little bit to it.” Mr. Melnik takes special pride in the changes he made to benefit both the farm and the environment. Majoring in agricultural economics at the University of Vermont in the 1990s, he developed an interest in sustainable farming. He became an early adopter of the methane digester, a device that converts cow manure into electricity. Mr. Melnik said that his main reason for implementing this technology was to make the most of the resources that they have. In addition, because this project was one of the first of its kind in Massachusetts, Mr. Melnik contributed to creating the relevant rules and regulations for the state. Another way that Bar-Way Farms promotes sustainability is through its focus on crop rotations, which keeps the soil in good health by keeping something growing all year. They also collaborate with other farmers in order to focus on crop rotation. In addition, Bar-Way Farms employs no-till farming, which also helps maintain soil health. Mr. Melnik said, “The best thing about the job is twofold. One is that, every day, even though we do the same thing—milk cows, feed cows, grow corn—every day has different challenges.” He listed constant changes in weather, even the COVID-19 pandemic as some of the factors that make every day unique. The second thing he loves about his job is “the sense of accomplishment.” He said that after completing all his chores, “you can look back and you have that satisfaction of seeing the work that you’ve done. Or you can see a cow and remember it as a little calf.” As of now, Mr. Melnik’s primary goal is to transition the farm to the hands of his eldest son, Henry Melnik, because he has fulfilled most of his own goals for the farm. He is excited for his son to take the reigns and to see what the future may hold for Bar-Way Farms.

This Thanksgiving break, Deerfield students from all over returned to a surprise in the laundry rooms. Beginning in July, Student Body President and Digital Managing Editor of the Scroll Jerry Huang ’23, the Student Life Office, and other administration members collectively made laundry more affordable. Previously, one load of laundry with hot water and drying could cost as much as five dollars. Now, it costs one cent. Chief Financial Officer Matthew Sheehy told the Scroll, “You know, students spending five dollars for a load of laundry roughly just didn’t feel right. So hence the [implementation of] ‘penny’ laundry.” Former Student Body President Hugo Nutting ’22 and Former Student Council Chair Ford Holmen ’22 first proposed the idea of free laundry to Head of School John Austin during the 2021-2022 school year. In September 2022, Huang followed up on the policy with Assistant Head for Student Life Amie Creagh. Huang said, “During my follow up meeting with Ms. Creagh, I was ecstatic to hear that Deerfield has no contractual restrictions with E&R regarding reducing laundry machine prices to one cent. Given that our laundry machines are owned by E&R, I was extremely surprised.” Mr. Sheehy explained the concept behind ‘penny’ laundry, saying, “If you set [the cost] to zero, then anybody could walk up.” Once Deerfield sorted out the financial offsets, Mr. Sheehy brought vendors to reprogram the laundry machines that they leased. Though some machines were reprogrammed to charge one cent, others were set to free. It’s still too early to fully understand the effects of “penny” laundry. Since Deerfield implemented the policy in the middle of the year, many students had already committed to laundry services like E&R. When asked about laundry, Annie Loring ’26 voiced gratitude for the newly implemented change. “Honestly, I would say one cent is pretty low,” she said. “Like what [the pricing] was before honestly wasn’t bad, but I feel like one cent is – it’s extremely [generous.]” While Mr. Sheehy wants students to use the laundry machines to their full advantage, he still wants them to remain conscious of their water and energy usage. Deerfield is committed to the new laundry policy for the rest of the academic year, but Mr. Sheehy and his team, along with Ms. Creagh, will reassess it over the summer. Mr. Sheehy concluded, “My hope and goal is that it continues long term, removing the barrier to students doing their laundry, building that life skill, and doing all of those kinds of things on a regular basis.” The new laundry system is sure to impact energy consumption, water usage, and students’ ability to complete the basic life school, but only time will tell what lasting footprints this change will leave in the Deerfield campus.

Over the past few decades, the number of diagnosed eating disorders in adolescents has risen. Deerfield Academy students are not exempt from developing eating disorders, and numerous stressors such as living away from home, keeping up with academic work, and managing relationships all have the potential to exacerbate patterns of disordered eating. The Scroll archives indicate that eating disorders have been prevalent and an openly discussed issue for nearly thirty years. In the Scroll’s 1995, Robert Dunphy ’97, founder of the Eating Issues Group, said he created it “in response to a demand for a varied, confidential, and effective counseling program to create a forum for the discussion of numerous eatingrelated problems.” With similar intentions, Kylie Davis ’14 started Deerfield’s Eating Disorder Support Group (EDSP) in March of 2012. Currently, neither of these groups are active. For Deerfield students, campus life may contribute to an increase in these types of behaviors. In her May 2015 Scroll article “Raising Awareness For Eating Disorders,” Alexia Hernandez ’15 said, “A major source of interaction [at Deerfield] is through food, especially during feeds at night, so maybe we could find other important ways to interact with people and friends besides overwhelming amounts of food.” This past year, Deerfield changed the terminology of “feed” to “snack.” In a 2022 Scroll article, Counselor Sarah Rosenthal said this change was implemented because “sometimes people felt compelled to have large quantities of food, and that didn’t always feel comfortable for some folks.” By changing the word, administrators hope to remove some of its more forceful connotations. Nutritional Education and Therapy and Outreach Coordinator Karyn Mancari has used her “Balanced Bites” column featured in previous Scroll issues (2019-2021) to discuss how to navigate eating on campus. In February 2020, she wrote that desserts, baked goods, or heartier meal options are “not meant to encourage unhealthy eating habits but to instead help teach moderation and flexibility with eating.” She also shared, “This idea of normalizing dessert is meant to minimize overeating.” She hopes that, by learning these skills in high school, “college and adult life will be easier to navigate as it can bring even more availability of food and emotional triggers.” Ms. Mancari also collaborates with many departments on campus including the Chen Health Center to support students with allergies; the Athletic Department to ensure proper nutrition for optimal athletic performance and well-being; and Director of Food Services Michael McCarthy to come up with the Dining Hall menu. Other on-campus resources for students struggling with eating include the Counseling Office and Peer Counselors. Director of Counseling Jennifer Daily stressed Deerfield’s deep commitment to students’ health and well-being during an email interview. She said, “In addition to counseling with the Counseling Center team, we offer nutritional counseling for all of our students. We also have an eating disorder specialist that consults with our health center team and sees students individually on campus.” All of these services work closely with both students and their families. Similarly, Peer Counselor Elizabeth Richards ’24 said, “If someone comes to us with signs of disordered eating, we can talk with them about any stressors in their life that may be contributing to their eating habits and help give them tactics to deal with stress that could indirectly help their eating behaviors.” In addition, Richards stressed that the Peer Counselors, counselors, and the on-campus nutritionist are all judgment-free resources for those concerned about themselves or a friend. Acknowledging that the Chen Health Center and other oncampus resources do not provide the same level of support as an eating disorder program, Director of Medical Services Bryant Benson may refer students to an outside program if health center staff deems a student’s condition too severe. Life at Deerfield can often be stressful for students, whether it be due to academics, social life, or eating habits. If you or someone around you is struggling with an eating issue, it is important to remember that various members of the Deerfield community are willing and able to help. *The NEDA Helpline is 1-800-931-2237

New technology, from the written word in 3400 BC to automated chatbots in the 21st century, has often shaken the foundations of the human routine and provoked public disorder. However, each new technological development often ends up becoming integrated into our lives. The recent release of Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer (ChatGPT) has prompted society to contemplate whether complete integration is possible. ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence language model launched by technology company OpenAI in November 2022. The program can engage in conversation with the user and generate complex prose and analysis. Other skills include writing unique essays, replicating writing styles, producing code, and solving mathematical equations in seconds and at no cost for anyone with internet access. Such capabilities have provoked concerns among educational institutions about the future of academic integrity and education as a whole. Unlike other forms of artificial intelligence, ChatGPT generates different text for each user, even when given the same prompt, making its results difficult to identify. According to OpenAI, the program functions on a reward-based reinforcement learning system, meaning the AI evolves in response to user feedback to improve the text it produces. Thus, each interaction makes ChatGPT’s responses more unique, harder to recognize, and easier to plagiarize. Additionally, the software does not attribute the authors of its training data in its responses, which creates problems concerning intellectual property. “Who owns these creations?” History Teacher Conrad Pitcher asked. “How do we protect intellectual property in AI?” The program functions solely to produce human-like text, meaning students do not know whose work they are referencing or the credibility of the information it presents. Mr. Pitcher also said that ChatGPT’s priority is not to produce accurate writing, but rather to “make the writing seem as if it’s human-produced.” The program’s wordsmithing is able to easily make incorrect information seem factual, setting potential traps for students. In addition to humanities courses, ChatGPT could also affect scientific and mathematical disciplines, especially as it improves. Despite the program’s language proficiency, ChatGPT cannot accurately compute high-level mathematical problems at the moment. “Many of the things that it doesn’t do very well we already have a tool for, such as Wolfram Alpha,” Mathematics Teacher Samuel Leitermann-Long said. “Some of the questions that ChatGPT solves very well, while showing the set of steps it uses, are reasonably basic word problems. I think that there’s the potential that those two pieces of technology combine in a way that makes them really powerful.” Despite its potential application in the classroom, ChatGPT may exacerbate economic inequality in schools, impacting the learning process as a whole. According to Mr. Leitermann-Long, ChatGPT is currently open to all internet users in order to collect as much data as possible to improve the program. However, following OpenAI’s switch from a nonprofit to a for-profit organization in 2019, as reported by The Wall Street Journal, the program could become very expensive. The ChatGPT website even states that the program is a “free research preview.” Mr Leitermann-Long said, “A worry that I often have at Deerfield, but also at a lot of places, is about tools or resources that are available to some of our most privileged students and not to many of our other students. We already know that there are financial disparities in the amount of resources you can bring to bear on your work. It’s possible that [ChatGPT will make] that worse.” Additionally, prominent artificial intelligence softwares such as ChatGPT may create a dangerous reliance on the technology. Dean of Faculty Ivory Hills said, “[We] have to do this counterfactual thought experiment. Who are the individuals that society trained to be capable of inventing AI? And if you live your whole life with AI, do you develop the skills required to invent AI? Are we hobbling ourselves by becoming too reliant on tools, thus not exercising the part of our brain that would allow us to have invented those tools? Or are we gaining superpowers so that we can invent even better tools in the future? I don’t know.” Due to such concerns surrounding academic integrity and equity, schools and institutions worldwide are grappling with how to best accommodate ChatGPT. According to The Wall Street Journal, New York City Public Schools banned the program entirely on school networks and devices beginning January 3, 2023. The Chronicle of Higher Education urged more educators to consider more in-class writing assignments, oral assessments, and utilizing GPTZero, a software developed by Princeton University student Edward Tian designed to identify ChatGPT-generated text. The Chronicle also suggested transforming curricula to exploit ChatGPT’s limitations, such as highly subjective and argumentative writing. However, Dean of Academic Affairs Anne Bruder stated that Deerfield might take a more adaptive approach. “We’re not going to outsmart this technology,” she said. “We’re going to be caught flat-footed if we’re just continually trying to squeeze into the little available spaces where ChatGPT isn’t.” As ChatGPT improves, those spaces likely will shrink – until, as some believe, artificial intelligence will become fully incorporated into education. Teachers may also be able use ChatGPT’s deficiencies to assess student comprehension. Mr. Leitermann-Long said that ChatGPT’s mathematical mistakes “mirror the misunderstandings that students might have. I could present this and say, ‘This model has fundamentally misunderstood some things. Let’s identify those errors.’” However, some wonder if the program could ever be suitable for classroom use. Zoë Matias ’23 asked, “If you’re just feeding ChatGPT a task, isn’t it destroying the whole point of formulating your own ideas?” According to English Teacher Heather Liske, any AI-generated text inherently lacks an essential property of all writing: human personality. She said, “In an algorithmic construction, fingerprints of [the writer] are absolutely invisible, at least to me, and what’s most compelling about any piece of work is that you can hear a particular voice.” Ms. Liske also expressed one of her primary concerns regarding ChatGPT: devaluing quality and overvaluing quantity. “It seems like an expression of the pressure that people feel to produce. If ultimately, that’s what students care about, then [Deerfield is] not doing [its] job as an institution,” she said. “I want my students to care about the process and care about themselves as writers and care about each other in a classroom community. But if we’re seeing ChatGPT more and more, then clearly, it’s evidence of a student focus on something else that’s not the classroom community, not writing in the company of other writers.” Other educators believe that ChatGPT could reframe how schools approach education entirely. According to Dr. Bruder, teachers will have to push students to incorporate their own experiences and reflections into their writing in order to evade dishonest use of the software. Concerning Deerfield’s core values of citizenship, face-to-face interactions, connectedness, reflection and balance, pursuit of mastery, and shared experiences, Dr. Bruder said, “They’re not things that can be mastered through AI,” suggesting that Deerfield should not fully embrace the integration of this technology as an educational tool. Yet the motto, “Deerfield Academy prepares students for leadership in a rapidly changing world,” could contradict the idea that Deerfield should not prioritize the use of artificial intelligence. As Dr. Hills said, “There could come a day or a time, and it could come very soon, where it’s a disservice to our students to not let them know how to use [AI].” Thus, Deerfield and artificial intelligence may not be fundamentally incompatible. According to Dr. Hills, “We’re going to have to, as a community, engage in a society-wide conversation, trying to remind ourselves of what is important.”

On January 9, pro- Jair Bolsonaro protestors stormed the Presidential Palace, Supreme Court, and Congressional buildings in Brasilia, Brazil. Protesters trashed offices after ten weeks of camping outside Brazilian army headquarters and demanded military intervention in overturning Lula de Silva’s presidential election. Earlier in November, former President Jair Bolsonaro lost the election to his left-wing rival, Lula de Silva, after years of instilling in his supporters a fear of Brazil’s democratic institutions. He claimed that the electronic voting system was fraudulent, Brazil being the only country in the world to use fully digitalized voting systems without paper backups. As described by a news article in The New York Times Brazil Bureau Chief Jack Nicas, “The movement had become almost its own self-animating beast that was going to push forward towards the capital with or without [Bolsonaro].” Bolsonaro supporters’ fears of Lula’s communist party turning Brazil into an authoritarian country can be traced back to Brazil’s military dictatorship in 1964. “There was a sense of identity that a lot of people found in the movement. They found purpose in it… they were part of something larger than themselves,” Nicas added. Gabe Swisher-Rosa ’23 who has family in Brazil, shared, “I cannot lie, I saw these protests coming. On Election Day I said to my dad that it’s going to be bad no matter who wins… He continued, “If Jair [won] the country [was] going to keep going down because of the government, if Lula [won, it was] going to be jeopardized by those who view Jair as a Christ figure when the protests began. I was immediately scared for my family back home but was also just very disappointed that I was right.” At a rally leading up to November elections, Bolsonaro urged his supporters, “For all of us we have three alternatives, especially for me: arrest, death, or victory.” Throughout his Presidency, Bolsonaro leaned on out-of-context reports, conspiracy theories, and circumstantial evidence, often presented with no attribution, to prove the fraudulence behind Brazil’s electoral system. However, there has been no evidence of fraud in the electronic voting system since the start of their use in 1996; rather, the machines have helped reduce voter fraud. A survey conducted in 2022 by The New York Times showed that three out of four of Bolsonaro’s supporters distrusted Brazil’s voting system, with worries of election rigging and willingness to protest upon Bolsonaro’s loss. “Those doubts,” Nicas wrote, “have undermined one of the world’s largest democracies and are likely to end up as…part of a global trend of lies and conspiracy theories, often stoked by populist leaders and amplified by the internet, that are threatening democratic norms in the United States and across the world.” When asked about the resemblance of Brazilian protests to the U.S capitol raid on January 6th, 2021, Swisher-Rosa said, “We have now set a precedent…of: if you don’t like the results of an election it is entirely justified and encouraged to attack the nation’s capital. I’m worried about the future of democracy as I view this as a result of a lack of faith in the democratic process and a denouncement of democracy as a whole.” Belle Fraga ’26, who lives in Brazil, commented on the media’s role in the Brazilian anti-government protests, sharing, “In Brazil, the main form of media is through cable. Many channels [do] not like Bolsonaro because he did not offer the same amount of financial support as when Lula was President. [As a result, these channels] were always advertising things against Bolsonaro and subconsciously pro-Lula,” which led the less-educated general public to be swayed with little knowledge regarding Lula’s past government actions. Reflecting on Brazil’s future, Swisher-Rosa concluded, “I think it’s important to acknowledge the history of corruption that has plagued Brazil and Latin America for decades. We have seen dictators come and go, revolutions ignite and burn out, and America has been in the middle, if not in the center, of it all. I think now more than ever is the time for the United States to step back and let Brazil fix itself for once. The people are in crisis and they need guidance, but it is not the place of an outside force to provide it.”

Each year, faculty and staff come together on the dance floor and break out their moves. After students leave campus for winter break, the Academy hosts the annual Jingle Mingle: an all-faculty event held in the dining hall as an end-of-year holiday celebration. Teachers and staff even participate in a raffle to win prizes. This year’s party happened on December 16, the day after students departed campus. Coordinator of Student Activities Brian Barbato described the event as “something [that] parallels what we try to do for a student experience for the adults in the community. This year’s festivities were centered around the theme of Hollywood and included an oyster bar, next level gaming, and a special “red carpet.” Although a 360 degree photo booth was also in the works, it was ultimately canceled. Math Teacher Forest Reid said, “There was dancing, although I’m not a dancer, music, and really good food. It’s a place for the teachers to hang out.” Mr. Reid further explained that the music was provided by some of Deerfield’s own teachers, from both inside and outside of the Performing Arts Department. The raffle prizes, along with the food, were funded through generous donations from the Deerfield Parents Network (DPN). Another feature of the Jingle Mingle is that it encompasses the entirety of the Deerfield staff—not just the teachers. Mr. Reid said, “It’s really nice and welcoming that all the staff are included.” The Jingle Mingle, through its inclusive invitation, strived to create a more open and encompassing experience for all adults who work on the Deerfield campus and bring them together in a festive season.