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Newly admitted students arrived at Deerfield on Fridays, March 27 and April 3, for the 2026 Spring Visit Days. Both days opened with a reception in the Hess, where Head of School John Austin delivered remarks on important information about the Academy. Following that, prospective students attended classes with a selected student host, and parents had the opportunity to visit classes and attend multiple panels about life at Deerfield. Senior Associate Director of Admission Dana Emerson shared how the Admissions Office views Spring Visit Days as of high importance. “These days can make or break a student’s decision to attend Deerfield,” she said. Following this idea, Mrs. Emerson noted that planning Spring Visit Days is a team effort that requires considerable preparation. Mrs. Emerson and Events Manager Tessa Doubleday explained how the process starts one year before actual Spring Visit Days, when members of the Admissions Office select dates for the upcoming year, considering factors such as religious holidays and other school schedules. As the dates approached, Mrs. Emerson noted that the Admission Office, Academic Affairs Office, and the Student Life Office worked together to design panels and choose speakers from all facets of Deerfield life. The Community Life and Academic Life panels, held throughout the day for parents, brought representatives from student support offices and academic support offices, respectively, to discuss their involvement in Deerfield. The Student Life panel, held after fifth period in the field house, gathered current students to answer questions about their time at Deerfield, including experiences with athletic commitments, dorm life, and homework. Mrs. Emerson explained how the office tried “to represent where our families are coming from” when choosing student speakers. She mentioned that many parents expressed how Deerfield’s panels “are really informative.” Beyond information panels, the Admission Office paired current with prospective students. Mrs. Emerson mentioned that prospective students “have an opportunity to list three subject areas that [they're] interested in seeing,” and they pair them with current students by interest. Audrey Tjoeng ’29, who participates in the Deerfield dance program, noted that she was paired with another dancer who also took similar classes. “We could relate with each other…and I had lots of fun keeping the conversation going,” she said. Behind the scenes, members from around the school also worked together to support a smooth event. Ms. Doubleday explained that the Admissions Office created the program and schedule for the day, and her role encompassed communicating with staff from various supporting departments to compile the logistics. She said that her job often starts with questions, including: “Here's a schedule for the day. Can you help me figure out how to make this happen? Can you work with dining? Can you work with it to sort of bring everything together to showcase everything that we want?” She noted the difficulties of planning Spring Visit Days: “While a lot of the logistics and even the program remain the same every year, you always have new people.” As opposed to Family Weekends or Reunions, where most participants are returning members to Deerfield, Spring Visit Days bring new faces to the Academy. “You’re acting like it’s your first Spring Visit Day, because it’s their first Spring Visit Day,” she expanded. Ms. Doubleday also noted the importance of the catering services that the dining hall team provides. On top of the regular responsibilities of providing three meals in the dining hall, the team is in charge of supplying snacks and beverages for receptions and hosting a buffet-style lunch in the multipurpose room for parents. Director of Food Services Michael McCarthy described his experience: “It's a busy, busy day…we bring in extra staff so that we can run the event and still operate the dining hall… Usually we start at five o’clock [in the morning]…[and] it’s right up until dinner ends.” Nevertheless, Mr. McCarthy emphasized the importance of catering to retaining prospective students: “For a boarding school, food service operation is one of the deciding factors, and I think that Deerfield has a really solid reputation.” Mrs. Emerson concluded, saying: “The feedback in general that we get from parents is that [Deerfield] has one of the best days.” She added how the Admissions Office considers Spring Visit Days as their version of the Super Bowl.

What Are You Standing On? Beliefs, as it turns out, can be more mobile than we think. Some of us assume that what we believe is the product of careful thinking, conclusions we arrived at through reason and experience. But for most high schoolers, complete conviction is difficult, for most of us inherit belief through family dinner tables. In any case, belief needs footing: the community that shares it, religious rituals, the small daily moments that make it feel inhabited. We rarely examine what that footing is, for we rarely have to. The foundation holds until the context of our belief changes—then, belief has to find its own footing. For many students, DA is the first test of that footing. You cannot spend four years here and remain entirely in your head. You live alongside people who pray before meals and people who find that strange. You might get to room with someone who is incredibly religious, or someone who is a firm materialist. The community changes, and the daily rhythms you had at home are gone. In that sense, Deerfield is an unusually fertile place for spiritual growth and discussion. A student described his experience coming into Deerfield. Priorly, he had a loose belief in God. Some of his extended family are religious, while the student himself holds no particular religion or practice, although he enjoys and believes in the idea of a god. Through a Christian best friend in Deerfield, he was introduced to the close-knit Deerfield black community his freshman year, warm, mostly devoted Christians, and genuinely present in each other’s lives. Slowly, he started accompanying his friends to church on Sunday and was eventually converted to Christianity. He emphasized that his friends did not try to preach to him; he was drawn into his faith by living. He was surrounded by people he loved, people for whom faith was a shared practice, and that practice became his before he had fully decided what he believed. Through community, he found the footing for his belief. Another student I know was guided toward church by his best friend. He was initially curious himself, and his best friend noticed that and opened a door for him. Overall, the mechanism was the same. As the first student went deeper into STEM, the empirical frameworks he used to understand the world began to feel incompatible and contrasting to his faith. His best friend left Deerfield, leading to him straying from the Christian community. Without his shared ritual, experiences, and daily proximity, his religious practice dissipated partially. Although he still remains religious, he describes his relationship with God as more distant. He still prays at night, but he stopped reading the Bible. As the context changes, the student grapples with the question of whether or not his faith is still worth maintaining. Marco Feng had a different experience. As a self-converted Christian, his journey started with curiosity. He read, reread, and pondered the New Testament as a kid; his scripture study became the footing of his faith. Deerfield, on the other hand, gave him the worship dimension he had not experienced before, like fellowship groups and weekly trips to church. He interpreted faith in a different way. Marco was not unsettled by the same reasons that pulled the first student away—empiricism, STEM, the friction between scientific thinking and religious belief. Faith, Marco told me, occurs in moral and spiritual questions. If scientific observation contradicts a literal reader of scripture, the interpretation is wrong, not the observation. Religious documents guide him to make meaning within, and it has become a moral mentor through his high school years. Those are two distinct case studies on how people can examine their beliefs within DA life, suggesting that belief depends on how it is grounded. But these reflective cases are not the dominant experience. For the majority, religion exists in a quiet form: present, but rarely discussed unprompted or with an analytical lens. When I interviewed students across campus, the answers were often matter-of-fact: I’m in between, I had never thought about it that much, my friends and I—we simply do not talk about this. One student describes herself and her family as “lazy Christians.” She does not structure her life around religious doctrine, but she believes in God nonetheless. Her experience is probably what resonates with the majority of DA students—somewhere in between. This turns out to be a dominant story not just at Deerfield, but everywhere. Analysis from the General Social Survey found that while religiously unaffiliated Americans have grown substantially since the 1970s, the percentage of Americans with strong affiliations has remained relatively steady. The growth of the “nones” came almost entirely from the nominally religious. When Americans were asked about why they left their religion, 38% said they simply drifted away. They stopped tending to their faith, and the footing eroded. A 2025 Pew Research data across more than 100 countries found that religious decline follows a specific sequence: people abandon public attendance first, then the personal importance of religion, and only finally nominal belonging, dropping the more demanding dimensions before the label itself. Devotion erodes before the identity does; people stop going to church long before they stop calling themselves Christian. The United States is currently in the middle stage of that sequence, as participation and devotion are already declining. Marco pointed me toward Jean Baudrillard, a French postmodernist philosopher whose work examines how media and technology reshape the way humans experience reality. Baudrillard’s core argument is that certain innovations don’t just change what we do—they change what feels real. After the video camera, experiences can be recorded, shared, and measured; the recorded version begins to feel more real than the experience itself. Applied to religion, the contrast emerges as well. Religious experience is almost entirely interior. Prayer, worship, or just that spiritual feeling, none of it produces an output of some sort, and none of it registers likewise as something visible or measurable. As daily life becomes increasingly structured around what can be seen, tracked, and produced, the interior life sometimes loses its footing, and while the belief may persist, the practice erodes. AI furthers this; human intelligence has always been valued precisely because humans are fragile, because they suffer, because emotion and contradiction make thinking nuanced and irreducible. AI, on the other hand, reduces intelligence to computation, to solving problems and generating outputs. People would still prefer humanity, but at the same time, because of AI, humanity will be degraded, for computing is economically and practically better than human intelligence. By that standard, the parts of human life that resist computation begin to feel like inefficiencies. The world stops rewarding the humanities, and it erodes. Religion faces something similar, for that it is not that God is disproven, but just that God becomes harder to prioritize inside a life structured around productivity, measurable output, and immediate human desires. As Marco puts it, the practical reality is such that you would give up going to church on Sunday to do homework. And frankly, we see this pattern everywhere. Most of us believe the planet is warming, yet we continue to live in ways that contradict it. The gap between what we believe and how we live is not unique to religion. But the gap goes deeper than inconsistency alone. The busyness of life crowds out the reflection, the questioning, the “meditation” and pondering with what you actually believe and why, not just the practice. Spiritual life, if it is to mean anything, requires a kind of intentional inwardness, and modern life is especially bad at making room for it. So a question comes up: is the wider erosion of faith—at DA, across the country, across the world—something to mourn? Counterintuitively, no, not entirely. The inherited footing was always just a placeholder. Community, rite, family tradition—these support belief from the outside, meaning the person inside never has to find out whether their beliefs can stand on their own. When scaffolding erodes, like when DA introduces you to new people, or when modernity strips your practices, you finally meet your belief in its own terms. A student at the sophomore declamation this year described believing in Santa Claus as a child; it was a faith he blindly followed. He then drew a line from his Santa Claus story to his belief in God, another faith he held from a young age, and questioned it by the same standard. He said that he had questioned belief, tested belief, and he still came out the other side with something more deliberate than what he started with. Doubt had made his faith more his own. That is a good claim, regardless of where you stand. The examined version of any belief, religious or otherwise, is more valuable than the inherited one. And the pressure on belief will only grow. The world changes rapidly around us, and the ground for your belief will move, for everyone, in every direction. What you do when the context of your belief changes—whether you rebuild or walk away—you will come out knowing yourself, and whatever you believe, more honestly.

The Gender-Sexuality Alliance (GSA), along with the help of Coordinator of Student Activities Brian Barbato and in collaboration with Foundation Beauty and other volunteers, made Pride Prom possible on May 13. The Acting Lab provided a space for affinity members to try on costumes and makeup before the event. Two drag queens, Pissi Myles and former ethics and religions teacher Ben Grimm entertained the crowd on a stage in the Hess lobby. Pride Prom started as an idea in the fall of 2018 as a dance centered around the queer community. After a brief hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the GSA brought back Pride Prom in 2021. Many people contributed to the planning process of Pride Prom. At the start of the winter term, the GSA reached out to Mr. Barbato, who booked both drag queens. GSA Advisor Melissa Dickey, Kat Dolan, and Hayes-Golding worked with students on the alliance’s planning committee, which focused on decorations and music. Before the event started, students tried on makeup courtesy of Foundation Beauty, a non-profit organization founded by Isabelle Schwartz ’24 that donates beauty products to low-income students. In addition to putting on makeup, students could experiment with different costumes provided by Karen St. Pierre, Deerfield’s costume designer for the Theater and Dance departments, or purchased from the Salvation Army. GSA Co-Chair Julia Shulman ’22 said, “The whole point of Pride Prom is to try to be yourself and give an opportunity for people to wear what they normally couldn’t wear, and be in a supportive space where you can do whatever you want.” Hayes-Golding also agreed that she liked to see the “freedom for people to really express themselves, especially in how they dress and how they dance.” In terms of music, the planning committee distributed a Google Form to the GSA mailing list asking for song requests that Alisa Stepchuk ’23, the DJ for the night, would play. GSA planning committee member Koai Solano Ortiz ’24 said, “I love that there are some songs I put on there that I wouldn’t get at [at] typical parties… [Even though the music] can be a little chaotic at times, it all works out in the end.” The drag queen performances left a deep impression on the audience. Pissi Myles, whose name was inspired by the American actress Missi Pyle, performed first. She was followed by Mr. Grimm, also known as Miss Georgia O’Q, who has been performing drag since college. In past years, he has performed for the Deerfield community during Halloween and the 2018 Pride Prom. They performed popular songs by singers like Olivia Rodrigo as well as other artists. Solano Ortiz described their drag performances as “game-changing, immaculate, and absolutely incredible.” Hayes-Golding said, “[Pissi Myles and Mr. Grimm] did an amazing job translating adult gay culture to a high school audience. It’s cheesy, dramatic and over-the-top, but that’s what makes it drag. It’s a part of our culture and history and we’re so glad to get to share it with everyone here.” In particular, Hayes-Golding said, “When she performed [to Olivia Rodrigo], the crowd came to life… I would argue almost everyone there had never seen a drag show [and] the adults in the room were so floored watching you all enjoy that moment.” Many students expressed excitement about how Pride Prom differed from other school dances. Austen Thomas ’24 said, “[Pride Prom] is a lot more open-minded and the attitudes are less judgemental.” According to GSA Co-Chair Will Sussbauer ’23, the inclusiveness and diversity of people made this dance unique. He said, “[Those not a part of the queer community] can hear our expression of our pride. There is nothing adverse about it. It’s just joy.” Hayes-Golding agreed and said, “[the adults who are part of the LGBTQ+ community] did not have this opportunity in high school [and by inviting everyone,] we can share who we are in a celebratory fashion with the entire school, and build more allies in Deerfield and in the world.”

Q: What do you enjoy most about teaching in the science department? A: I love that we get to do labs and experiments and discover new things which is just so fun. Q: What is currently your favourite chemistry equation/formula? A: Since we’re just studying it right now, I’ll go with pH+pOH=14. Q: Is there anything that surprised you most about teaching here? A: I learnt so much from my students. What surprised me the most when I first came here was how curious and interested students were. Q: What is your go-to motto when coaching Volleyball in the fall? A: I’d say little steps today make for big steps over the whole season. Q: If you could bottle up one moment from your time at Deerfield and keep it forever, what would it be? A: The first time I was coaching volleyball when we beat Choate on Choate Day. It was a home game and it was the fifth set and we won 15-13. I remember watching everybody storm onto the court. It was fantastic! Q: What is your favorite hobby (outside of teaching)? A: I like exercising. I also enjoy biking and swimming. Q: Do you have any hidden talents? A: No, not really. I’m pretty boring. Q: What do you enjoy most about being a dorm faculty member in Mather? A: Mostly getting the “tea” from people around the dorm. Q: If you could try out an extreme sport, what would it be? A: I think I’d definitely go for Heliskiing. The one where they drop you off at the top of the slope with a helicopter. That’s pretty cool.

Finn Broder '23: “I believe there are only two genders.” That’s a sentiment you’ll never hear around campus. Yet, it’s unlikely that few students share this view, as 60% of Americans believe that one’s gender is determined by one’s birth sex, according to a May 2022 study by the Pew Research Center. Deerfield rightfully boasts about its ability to pull students from across the United States and around the globe. Why is it, then, that expressing a nationwide majority view is considered socially taboo here? Besides social pressure, there is also institutional bias. When I took the ninth-grade health class, there was one day where we learned about the difference between the social construct of gender and biological sex, the importance of respecting preferred pronouns, and the notion of gender as a spectrum. Why does the curriculum teach gender according to a left-wing viewpoint instead of acknowledging all sides to this issue? Gender and sex matters never used to consume the attention of policymakers, but times have changed. The same study by the Pew Research Center found that 37% of Democrats support a mandate for transgender athletes to compete only on athletic teams that align with their birth sex, whereas 85% of Republicans support the same requirement. Many Democrats argue that Republicans violate the rights of marginalized groups, but nearly all Republicans dispute this claim. Such a sharp discrepancy makes this point of contention a legitimate, political one. On similar political issues, Deerfield Academy should retain a neutral institutional stance. Even if this is the current aim of the Academy, I do not believe our school’s culture supports this aspiration. Deerfield’s website makes clear that the institution would unequivocally promote the free exchange of ideas on campus to arrive at a mutual understanding, even if individuals still disagree. The website states, “Deerfield encourages each student to develop an inquisitive and creative mind.” How are students supposed to pursue this noble goal if our health instructors simply reiterate the opinions of select medical associations and activist groups, creating an uncomfortable environment for students who oppose that ideology? By teaching the one-sided narrative that gender and sex are independent and urging timid ninth-graders to use preferred pronouns that may contradict their beliefs about gender, Deerfield’s health curriculum has markedly chosen a side to this political issue. I am not arguing Deerfield teachers should avoid teaching controversial topics. There is a difference between teaching one viewpoint as correct and opening up the classroom for constructive dialogue. The latter means establishing an environment where no one is terrified of offending those who can’t handle listening to opposing stances. In non-classroom settings at Deerfield, it is a silent truth that right-leaning students like me will face social ramifications, especially if they are vocally conservative on social issues such as gender and abortion. While I appreciate the high stakes of these issues—which have political and moral ramifications—exaggerated sensitivity is counterproductive and unsustainable. (To be clear, conservatives are surely not immune to oversensitivity either.) Unfortunately, it seems that Deerfield has already decided to prioritize keeping students in their comfort zones over real-world learning and asking questions. A common response to my stance on free speech is that institutions must suppress socially conservative ideologies to protect the identities of marginalized groups. However, I strongly oppose this attempt at sensitive language because it points to a larger issue of Deerfield abandoning its commitment to preparing students for “a rapidly changing world,” in which there will not always be trigger warnings and guardrails in place to protect feelings. The reality is that right-leaning individuals and values aren’t going to just go away. If Deerfield wants to shield a minority of the student body from engaging in productive dialogue, Deerfield is only doing a disservice to those groups. In our recent Climate Survey, an intriguing question was posed to community members: Do we believe more strongly in the free exchange of ideas or protecting people from opinions they might find offensive? I can only hope that our school’s feedback will send a resounding message to those in charge: Deerfield must remain politically neutral while teaching students how to learn openly from their peers. It will fail in its mission if students’ views only align with the academic departments’ politicized curriculum. More importantly, Deerfield’s future requires a culture shift in which cancel culture and trigger warnings are abandoned in favor of open-mindedness and personal and collective growth. Isaiah Ruffin '24: The moment I was accepted to Deerfield, I felt overflowing excitement bubbling inside of me. I imagined what life would like at such a preeminent institution. I dreamed of students respecting one another, students unashamedly sharing their thoughts and opinions, students throwing themselves wholeheartedly into their work, and students who prioritized altruism and interpersonal relationships. But many of these qualities I dreamed of proved to be just that: dreams. During my first term, I interacted with others in a way that relied on these assumptions. I spoke about my beliefs freely, while listening intently to the perspectives of others. As I acclimated to the school community over the first few weeks, it seemed as though my dreams were realized; conversations I had in and out of classes implied that socially liberal beliefs maintained some precedence here, but I still felt at ease when communicating some of my socially conservative opinions. Yet, after continually sharing these perspectives, I found that my social standing was changing. The once constructive discussions I had outside class surrounding political, social, cultural or economic issues turned into heated and unproductive shouting matches when debating beliefs. My peers would deride me as I shared my sentiments, dubbing me racist, homophobic, or bigoted. People began to ignore me when I said hello, accost me about my beliefs, and even place pride flag stickers on my clothing. I tried to tell others that my social opinions were firmly rooted in my religious faith and that I still wished to be amicable with everyone despite our differing beliefs. However, despite my efforts at reconciliation, such conduct persisted. There were nights when I lay in bed sobbing, asking myself how people could so aggressively reject me and my faith. The harassment only stopped when I got faculty involved, but their refusal to engage in civil discourse has continued. One of the goals of the Academy, as described by Dr. Austin in his October 2021 Action Plan Progress Report, is to “intentionally support a learning culture that honors the disparate beliefs of a diverse and dynamic student body drawn from across the United States and around the globe.” I see no support for the cultivation of this learning culture, and, contrary to Dr. Austin’s statement in the Progress Report, it seems there are few steps taken to demonstrate the Academy’s “commitment to free and open expression, including ideas and opinions that some may consider disagreeable, unwelcome or unpopular.”

This year may have been a “perfect storm” for Deerfield admissions. DA continues to be a school held in the highest esteem by the best applicants from a global pool, but this leads to both good news and bad news. This year’s admission statistics were in record numbers, as evidenced by a record-breaking 14.3 percent acceptance rate. This phenomenal yet daunting statistic surpasses last year’s 16 percent acceptance rate and is particularly remarkable considering the realities of the current economic situation. This leads, however, to bad news: admissions must continue to turn away many qualified applicants. The situation is made even more difficult because the school has experienced several years of high “yields” where more accepted students than projected have chosen to attend, resulting in over-crowding. Now there is a mandate to monitor and even slightly reduce the number of total students in order to remain a mid-sized school with the kind of community that makes Deerfield unique. The situation has been further complicated this year by a very high level of interest from siblings of current students and legacy students. Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Patricia Gimbel explained the realities of the situation. “It has been brutally competitive.” She especially noted that “there are many more student siblings and legacy applicants on the waitlist than in previous years.” The core of our legacy lies in being a community of about 600 students, a specific size that allows both wide options and close relationships. This mandate to control size has added another dimension to the complicated task of admissions.

President Barack Obama’s State of The Union Address, a political swamp, reinforced the lack of success with today’s polarizing party system. Yet who is to blame for the inefficiency of today’s politics? Is it the Republicans, who systematically deny any chance of a health care reform in America? The Democrats who insist on leaving the issue of immigration alone? The answer does not rest in a political party, as the American people might assume it would. Instead, the issue is us. As Americans, we pledge allegiance to our political party, not our country. We insist on labeling ourselves as Republican, Democrat, and even the indecisive Independent. Instead, we should take a more democratic approach to our politics. We need to prioritize the country’s needs and vote accordingly. We cannot simply vote for the Republican governor simply because we agree with a few of the Republican platforms. Instead, we need to create a better party system, with the extremes on either side and the general public somewhere in between. We need to eliminate the party names and the agendas that follow them. Why should a politician who supports strengthening the immigration policy then be forced to be pro-choice? A disheartening sign from both parties was the lack of support for Obama during his address. For example, when Obama praised the tax cuts for 95% of Americans, the Democrats jumped from their seats with a thundering applause while the Republicans sat stone-faced on their side. On the other hand, Obama viciously attacked George W. Bush and made him responsible for all the hardships of Obama’s first year in office. How can our political system be effective with such polarization between our leaders? While here at Deerfield, many of us cannot voice our opinions through a poll vote, we can still practice the same principles with our own Student Council. With the Student Body President election coming up in the spring, we are sure to hear of all the successes that each candidate had while at Deerfield, yet unfortunately, we are sure to see a popularity vote of some sort in which students simply vote for their friend or someone they imagine would be a good leader because of his or her public speaking abilities. Everyone needs to consider their vote—to think more about the platform of the campaign rather than the person standing behind it. If we do that, we are sure to have an excellent President of Deerfield next year with a cohesive student government and numerous opportunities for student input. America needs the same kind of system—needs to avoid the external party connotations and simply focus on the motives of the candidates. Inevitably, the next time you are asked about your party affiliation you will be enticed to simply state, “I am a Conservative,” but instead you should say, “Well I do not belong to a specific party. I support the idea of creating more strict immigration laws, yet at the same time I am pro-choice.” Essentially, we need to break out of the shackles of the political party names that constrict our beliefs as well as the efficiency of our government.

As Deerfield’s bottled water culture begins to fade, the Environmental Stewardship Advisory Committee (ESAC) continues to tackle other environmental issues on campus. This year, various environmental initiatives, ranging from the annual Green Cup challenge to the removal of refrigerators from student rooms, have met with success and changed habits throughout the student body. This has been largely due to the potent combination of the Environmental Proctors and the Environmental Club, which work with students and their halls to foster a more environmentally-conscious student body. Much of the work, however, can also be credited to the efforts of ESAC, a joint-group of students, faculty, and staff set up by the Strategic Planning Committee. In its first year of operation, ESAC met once a week to set its agenda. In the fall, ESAC decided to focus its effort on combating the use of bottled water on campus. Environmental and Sustainability Coordinator and the head of ESAC, Kristan Bakker, explained that water bottles were both “environmentally and economically impractical.” Peer schools have already banned the sale of bottled water, just as other, like-minded environmental groups have sought to eradicate them on campuses across New England. To reduce the necessity of bottled water, ESAC plans to place water spigots in the bathrooms of each dormitory hall. So far, Barton, Rosenwald-Shumway, McAlister, and Field dormitories have the facility installed. “Hydration stations,” or water fountains for filling reusable water bottles, are also planned for nearly all academic buildings. One has already been installed in the library. Director of Food Services Florrie Paige, who works on behalf of the dining hall with ESAC, reported that there was a “very good feedback from students.” In addition to these two initiatives, unlike in the past, the Dining Hall no longer served bottled water on last Parents’ Weekend. This move, according to the dining hall, saved 2,800 plastic bottles. Surprisingly, Ms. Paige noted, “There were no comments, from parents or students.” Clearly bottled water is not missed. Most notably ESAC has worked with the deans to remove fridges from student rooms. Mrs. Bakker asserted that fridges are “always on, use energy when they are empty, and are more energy inefficient when smaller.” The decision to eliminate refrigerators followed the lead of peer schools, including Hotchkiss, Exeter, NMH, Andover and Choate, all of which already have bans in place on refrigerators. Of those, Andover, Hotchkiss, and Choate also have a ban on the sale of bottled water on their campuses. Despite some student resistance, the removal of fridges is no doubt another success for the environmentally conscious as the school year winds down.

Whenever anybody asks me about my personal background, “first” impressions, or daily life at Deerfield Academy, I usually answer with two simple words: magnificent and complicated. It is magnificent because everything is simply perfect here. The rural beauty, the clean air, and morning birdcalls remind me of the little village where I grew up. Socially, I appreciate the friendly, intellectual, and artsy community. Unlike those at my previous high school, students, faculty and physical plant employees are open-minded, inquisitive, and ambitious. The surrounding warmth and completely different education methods encourage me. Comparing the school system here to the “core” Eastern-European curricula, I recognize major differences. Back in Hungary, we take 12 to 15 subjects per year; we can’t choose our classes, and lessons are not focused on personal opinion. These educational characteristics are typical of most young, post-communist democracies. These democracies involuntarily oppress underprivileged minorities such as the Romany, the largest in Europe, to which I belong. Around twelve million Romany live in Europe, including the 1.5 million who reside in Hungary. In the past, less than seventeen percent of them finish elementary school, around six percent complete high school and far less than one percent enter university. And yet, education still plays an important role in our lives. Four years ago, I stood up for the cause and wrote proposals to the Hungarian government, planned integration projects, and pushed myself in order to acquire a good education under the strong belief that one day everything would be better. In 2008, after a Harvard interview, I recognized that I should spend an extra year at a boarding school before attending college. Deerfield Academy offered the wonderful opportunity for a transition year in order to acclimate myself to the US education system, meet unique people, and further pursue dreams. Now that I am here, it’s not easy at all. Every day I study fervently, manage two small companies, deal with national development projects, struggle with personal health issues, and worry about my father’s physical condition. In this multiple-identity game called life, sometimes I can’t decide whether I am the luckiest or the most miserable person. But one thing is sure—I am not alone in this game anymore. Every day there is a student, a faculty member, or a physical plant worker who encourages me to push further, exceed my limits and make my dreams come true. I try to be worthy of both my heritage and my future objectives. Thank you very much, Deerfield Academy. Thank You All. Gabor Gurbacs ’10 is a post-graduate from Hungary. He recently gave a presentation to the Economics Department at Harvard University.

­­­­­­­­ This community prides itself on being comprised of individuals who are different from each other by race, nationality, socio-economic standing, religious beliefs, shape, size, personality, abilities, interests, sexuality and more. The hope that accompanies such diversity is that students will learn how to better understand different types of people so that, when faced elsewhere with the unimaginable variety of people in the world, students will be better equipped to interact, learn and work with them. This is a gift. Student clubs like the Black Student Coalition, the Jewish Student Coalition, the Gay-Straight Alliance, and others offer students of a particular group an opportunity to identify with and support one another, and invite the community to join the discussion. The Deerfield Identity Project is, for the second year, giving students the chance to identify themselves in a personal way before the community to see in locations around campus while our motto urges students to be worthy of those things that come to us through birth, like our ancestry or family values. And yet the majority of us still don’t know each other. While student clubs, school initiatives and the identity project provide a safe and open environment for our diverse community, they cannot make individuals take a risk and get to know someone whom they don’t quite understand. Instead, they (either clubs with a collective identity or individuals participating in the identity project) provide the community with labels—“Black,” “Gamer,” “Bisexual,” “Jock,” “Nerd,” or “Artsy.” By giving these labels to one another we are inviting each other to end the conversation and retreat to our respective corners, almost absolving others from caring about who we are. Don’t get me wrong—students feel safer, and our school is better off, because of these initiatives. But tolerance isn’t all we aim to achieve. In an intelligent community in a nation known most for its freedom and its diversity, respectful tolerance is expected. Quietly accepting people for the labels they place on themselves is not propelling us forward to our common humanity. The heart of what I am getting at is that people are lazy. I know I am. If you present, or misrepresent, yourself in an easy to understand package then no one will care to ask any more. Similarly, try to go beyond the simple, safe definitions your peers often give themselves. The next step we must all take individually and collectively is to appreciate each other for more than what is easy to understand. The Deerfield community is a wide and deep resource for the socially curious. What make this interesting are the parts of it that we haven’t yet encountered or can’t quite conceptualize. Keeping this in mind, write something on your identity paper that will make someone else ask you a question. They could be your next best friend, and if not, at least they aren’t just a label.

With President Obama’s latest speech to Congress, he pushes harder still to pass the latest concoction of healthcare reform. Despite his powerful rhetoric, there are still many details to his plan that have both conservatives and fiscally conservative Democrats worried about the bill. From the cost of the bill, to where the money will come from, and finally to how that money will be spent the argument is far from over. But the real question is, how bad is America’s health care? Is it to the point where we need to take such a drastic measure as to wipe out the private system and build from the ground up with the public option? The answer is quite simply, no. Health care in America is not that bad; in fact, one might argue, looking at statistics, it’s far better than that of many countries with a socialized system. For example, take the abundance of resources. MRIs and CTs, two scanning devices used more and more commonly in standard medical treatment are far more common in America than in countries with socialized systems. In fact, America has 27 MRI machines per million persons, while Canada and Britain, two countries with socialized health care, have only six MRI’s per million. A similar situation exists with CT machines, with 34 per million in America and only 12 per million in Canada and 8 per million in Britain. Clearly, on a purely resource level, we have the ability to treat a greater number of illnesses. The other question is, what do the American people want? A June 2008 poll done by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 89 percent of Americans are happy with our healthcare system. Public Opinion Strategies, a polling organization, asked Americans if they “favor or oppose President Obama’s health care plan.” The numbers from this poll paint a clear picture: 25 percent favor and 37 percent oppose the plan, with 37 percent undecided and 1 percent who did not respond. Essentially, the majority would rather stick with the current health care situation. Finally, let’s look at the price tag (which Obama claims will be 900 billion dollars), or more importantly, how that tag will be fulfilled. Obama plans to use major spending cuts from the current government health care system, Medicare and Medicaid, to help cover the cost of the public option. The irony here is: if the two government options already in place are having such issues with budgets and are places of waste, then how on earth is a much larger-scale, government-run health-care program going to stay on top? The private sector has the incentive to do well—to provide the best product for the best price to make a profit. That’s how capitalism works. The government doesn’t have that incentive and is simply willing to burn through taxpayers’ dollars. So, does the benefit of covering a small portion of people (as is the case now if and illegal immigrant goes to an ER) outweigh the cost? I don’t think so. Does this all mean that our healthcare is perfect? By all means no—there is plenty of room for reform and design changes to the way it’s run. However, it is clear that, in Americans’ minds, privately-run health care is the way to go. sources: http://weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/016/943pfdxe.asp http://pos.org/inthenews/heathcare_interviewschedule.pdf http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14419387

When my mom first mentioned to her Southern colleagues that I was at “boarding school,” they gave her looks of pity and probably wondered behind her back what I had done to deserve such a punishment. She had to explain to them that no, I was not a bad kid, and in fact I had chosen to attend a rigorous academic institution. The term “boarding school” conjures up different images, but there is sometimes a shocking disparity between these preconceived notions. People imagine boarding-school students as either troubled teens with serious disciplinary issues, or in a Gossip Girl style setting, full of glamour and snobbery. As actual members of this mythical group, we know this is not the case. Deerfield is not a disciplinary institution, and while many students do come from wealthy, privileged backgrounds and zip codes, we do not attend extravagant galas every weekend with champagne and cutting-edge couture. But how can we prove this, when there are so many misconceptions? The 2005 novel Prep, written by a Groton graduate, casts boarding schools in a distasteful light: the main character spends her four years feeling lonely and alienated in an elitist culture dominated by money, appearance, and social status. The author clearly has a lot of pent-up resentment about her own boarding school days, but many of her insights come off sounding whiney and merely enforce stereotypes. Television shows like Gossip Girl or NYC Prep have also not helped change boarding school’s image. While they both are set at private day schools, the world they represent, while entertaining, is not real. Once again, only stereotypes are reinforced and no real insights are revealed. When I leave Deerfield and go to college, are people going to immediately judge me once they find out I went to boarding school? Probably. And it is true, there are experiences related to leaving home at age fourteen that some of my college peers will not understand. But when I try to explain my “days of glory” to them, what I will impart is not the stereotypical view of boarding school, but the unique traditions and connections that make up what may not be as successful a TV show, but are the truth. I hope I will find that the boarding-school experience is not unique and that people can relate to what we foster here. School spirit was not invented by Deerfield Academy. Neither was the importance of community, or the value of honor and integrity, or the ethic of hard work and intellectual stimulation. Loyalty and love for your close friends are not just a boarding school phenomenon. These are not harmful stereotypes—they are widely held, relatable ideals, and not just for a boarding-school community. Boarding school will probably always have a stigma attached to it. People will always question the ethics of sending kids away from home at a young age, or spending the cost of a college education on high school. But it would be worthwhile for people to let go of their outdated, disproportionate stereotypes and try to understand the diversity of mind, energy, ideals, and background that truly characterizes a boarding school experience.