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GRAPHICS BY JONATHAN XU/DEERFIELD SCROLL In a series of network upgrades geared toward increasing cybersecurity, Deerfield Information Technology Services (ITS) overhauled the Green Door Wi-Fi system for the upcoming school year by implementing additional security measures and diversifying the different networks. The changes include removing the previous Wi-Fi network, “DA Wireless” and adding three additional networks: “Green_Door” for student laptops, “Green_Door_BYOD” for other student devices, and “Green_Door_Guest” for guests on campus. Director of ITS and Computer Science Program Kimberly Butz referred to the previous “DA Wireless” Wi-Fi as the “Wild West.” “Anybody could connect pretty much any kind of device to DA Wireless. It was a wide-open network with no encryption and no security,” said Ms. Butz. The upgrades follow growing concerns about cybersecurity in Massachusetts schools, along with phishing attempts that have targeted the Deerfield community. The ITS team purchased equipment for the new Wi-Fi system over summer. Ms. Butz explained they worked to increase cybersecurity for the 2026 to 2027 school year and collected data in order to prepare for potential future attacks. ITS had been able to monitor traffic, but changes in the network proved to increase encryption and digital safety. On September 8, public schools in nearby Springfield and Everett closed for four days due to multiple cyberattacks that resulted in the potential compromise of personal data of school community members, prompting intervention by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Cyberattacks have been rising in Massachusetts for almost a decade; digital security breaches rose by 256.7% between 2018 and 2025 according to independent, education-based research organization Pioneer Institute. Ms. Butz discussed a few reasons hackers would want to gain access to a student’s account, the first being malicious intent. The second reason is monetary: hackers are incentivized to collect data and charge the victim a ransom to get the data back. The third, one particularly targeted towards underage students with a blank profile, is for credit. The most common reason is to plan future attacks, including situations where hackers could impersonate Deerfield when communicating with other parties. Nicole Lefavour ’27 shared her experience with a phishing attempt. In early March 2026, she received an email asking her to fill out a DocuSign form, a platform Deerfield also uses. “It looked pretty much legitimate … So, of course, I clicked the link to try to sign the form,” she said. A week later, Lefavour was informed that a “special party invitation” had been sent out to all of her contacts, and other students who received the invitation said that clicking the link downloaded software to their computer. “Because my email had been hacked into, the hacker actually responded to those people in my email, and they responded saying, ‘yes, this is me,’” she said. In many cases, these email conversations went back and forth for several rounds. Ultimately, Lefavour’s parents, who had also received the email, informed her of the situation. Lefavour was not alone in her experiences dealing with cybersecurity concerns. Another phishing attempt last spring reportedly mentioned the death of a faculty member’s family member and listed free items that they were supposedly giving away. Ms. Butz warned that “[if] it seems too good to be true, it probably is,” as shipping for these items turned out to be $400 to $500. ITS shared this information with students during School Meeting on October 7.

As the fall athletic season began, Deerfield held its annual cheerleader tryouts in the Hess Auditorium on September 15. Taking place right after sit-down, the cheerleader tryouts brought together students, returning cheerleaders, and this year’s roster of eager upperclassmen candidates. To be a cheerleader, upperclassmen signed up via the form on the student bulletin weeks before. Then, candidates formed groups of three and choreographed a routine, often consisting of two to five minutes of dancing in fun costumes, an original cheer and a classic Deerfield cheer. Some of the popular choices this year included “Aga-Chi” and “Hail Deerfield.” Right after tryouts took place, the returning cheerleaders and Sports Information Director Carly Barbato gathered together as the decision panel. Captain Deerfield Emmanuel Atiegha ’27 explained, “first, we designed a rubric based on the good qualities of a good cheerleader. Then, we rewatched the performances group by group, person by person, and assessed each candidate based on the criteria discussed previously.” While the rubric remains a mystery, Atiegha shared that one moment from this year’s tryouts that he found especially memorable was when James Bellig ’27 did a backflip on stage. Finally, new cheerleaders were announced at the fall season pep rally led by the existing cheerleaders the Friday one week after tryouts. Students packed into the Kravis to hear the state of this year’s fall varsity teams and watch the long-awaited new cheerleading roster. After much anticipation, new cheerleaders were called up by grade and gender and asked to do the Deerfield Battle Cry. Congratulations to this year’s new cheerleaders: James Bellig ’27, Gage Calhoun ’27, Ava Cederholm ’27, Amelia Healey ’27, Howard Jin ’27, Gianluca Simonelli ’27, Kaylin Alvarez ’28, Cole Bannon ’28, Erin Dunne ’28, Zeina Matouk ’28, Uyi Inomwan ’28, Stephen Gomez ’28, Zeina Matouk ’28 and Willow Tugume ’28! Hear what the new cheerleaders have to say: Willow Tugume ’28: “Being a cheerleader is a given opportunity to share the joy I have with the underclassmen and people that are new to the environment.” Howard Jin ’27: “I wanted to be a cheerleader because it gives me the opportunity to be a part of a positive influence on a great community of people who are passionate and willing to support their peers.” Gianluca Simonelli ’27: “Being a cheerleader is a great way to inspire people to buy in to the community and make them appreciate everything Deerfield has given them.” Ava Cederholm ’27: “I’d always looked at the cheerleaders as the epitome of support and inclusion … this group of people that were so confident and focused on representing Deerfield and showing people that it’s okay to be spirited … so it was very rewarding to become a new cheerleader.” Zeina Matouk ’28: “One important thing that me and the other new cheerleaders want to do is show all the love through going to games and supporting one another, and just being really out there.”

HEIDI LIANG/DEERFIELD SCROLL At Deerfield, we remember not the people who were average during their respective times in history but those who were radical — culture-changing, forward-looking citizens, whether it’s Benjamin Franklin, MLK Jr. or Gloria Steinem. Continuing on this theme, I wish to explore how our memories affect our opinion-making and reflections on humanity’s past. In order to understand how history is remembered at Deerfield, one must look at time, the ultimate healer of bad memories; the environment of Deerfield, as in the way students today perceive events of the past; and the ways in which historical events are viewed in hindsight. How will Deerfield students view current political events, specifically relating to U.S.-China relations, in the decades to come? While I believe that ethnic diversity at Deerfield will create a dual narrative of U.S.-China tensions in the future, it is imperative that students further take in a multitude of perspectives in order to create a well-rounded and less polarized community. Let’s start with the factor of time. Jimmy Carter is an example of a presidential career influenced by his post-presidential charity and pacifying work across the globe. His approval rating was 16 points higher in 2021 than in 1981 when he left office. Can this increase be explained by his transition into the moral high ground? If so, people will remember the United States during the 2020s and ask if we took the moral high ground. I urge you to consider: what will we tell our grandchildren 50 years down the line? Will Deerfield’s U.S.-China Relations course still exist? How will its material be affected by trade wars, Taiwan, and the world’s most powerful strongmen, Xi and Trump? In order to address and assess the second factor of Deerfield’s complex environment, I thought watching the Disco Dance would give an accurate view of how students view the past. That night, I ventured through the mystifying hallways of the Athletic Center, trying to observe what I saw. In theory, this should be an event all about the 1970s and disco. Instead, almost everything was culturally out of place: the outfits, dancing, music, projections on the wall, and slang and verbiage. I suppose flowers were the theme of the day — the sort of vibe that clothing companies use to portray the era, the sort of hippie-ness popular at the time. Yet, the brutalist dancing and house music set a fiery tone, evoking feelings contradictory to peace and love. While Deerfield might remember the 1970s this way, a majority of Americans had turned down the hippies’ liberal and free-love values, rejecting pacifist presidential candidate George McGovern by 23 points against Nixon in 1972. Still, social and technological progress has exponentially increased in the past 55 years, and the morals of the hippies are now ingrained in society, whether it be gay marriage, Earth Day or art. Does that make their side the “winner” or the more remembered one because of their “moral” deeds? To the third examination on the formation of historical narratives, let’s look at the cultural characteristics of both Chinese and American societies. When showcasing the United States and China, their contrasting authoritarian and democratic systems lend themselves to closed and open discourse. In China, censorship occurs at an incredibly fast pace, with machines and workers removing potentially seditious posts within 24 hours. China has not only eliminated the free man’s voice, but also rewritten history. This past summer, I took a course on China, and our teacher recounted how his professor in China, during the 90s, claimed that the Tiananmen Square Massacre was “peaceful” and that there was zero bloodshed, when other non-governmental tallies suggest otherwise. I predict that in the future, Chinese international students will be more inclined to hold a pro-China perspective on its trade and resource war with the United States. The United States has embarked on its own route, trying to balance criticism with a pragmatic partnership with China. In September 2026, Trump attributed anti-data center rhetoric to China’s “PR campaign,” yet he embraced Xi as a peer during their recent meeting in Washington D.C. There is no doubt that many American Deerfield students will remember tense political turmoil, tariffs and the A.I. race, but whether or not their memories will include collaboration between the two superpowers is questionable. In hindsight, whichever country has the stronger “moral narrative” will take on the dominant role as storyteller. The willingness of the future Deerfield community to take on multiple angles will depend on seeing a multitude of viewpoints how they were expressed years ago. Like the dichotomy between how 1920’s Great Britain was viewed as a “savior of Africa” and how 1960’s Great Britain was ostracized for its immoral and cruel roles in its colonies, Deerfield students, years down the road, will talk about China and the United States for the roles they took to make humanity better. Students will analyze each country’s work in developing healthy climate technologies, treating ethnic minorities as equals to the majority population and minimizing poverty, along with countless other areas. In the end, future Deerfield students will form the dual narrative of 2020’s U.S.-China relations, and their wisdom and opinions shall lie within the eye of the moral beholder, shaped by the greater common good each respective society has created.

ALICIA YIN/DEERFIELD SCROLL Entering her final year on the team, captain of girls varsity soccer Meryl Gilbert ’27 expressed that soccer has helped her develop a deep commitment to both the game and her teammates. She hoped to use her role as captain to continue building the team and leave a lasting impact on the program. Growing up in upstate New York, she started in town leagues before playing for a club team at 10. Since then, she spent two years balancing local league with national-level Elite Clubs National League (ECNL) soccer. After arriving at Deerfield, she continued competing with a local club team along with playing for the Academy’s varsity team. Over her Deerfield career, Gilbert faced challenges both on and off the field. “It’s hard to balance life and play soccer at a high level,” she said. Her most difficult challenge came during her sophomore spring, when she tore her labrum. The injury kept her from playing soccer and competing in track throughout the summer leading into her junior season. Although she eventually returned to soccer, she had to slowly work her way back into playing. “It’s still hard because I never got surgery and I am still in pain,” she said. “But you just have to push through.” This experience has influenced how she approaches leadership. “Sometimes the hardest mental block is to get over yourself and stop being selfish,” she stated. “Especially as a captain, you need to prioritize the team, even if that means making sacrifices.” For Gilbert, this mindset has been vital during her final season as the team’s captain. Her teammates see her commitment to the team in the way she leads daily. Winnie Underwood ’28 described Gilbert as “an amazing leader” who is “sweet and hard-working” and has “so much care for the team.” Underwood especially remembered Gilbert’s support for her when she played an entire game as an underclassman goalkeeper. “In my position, I am supposed to yell, and I was worried to do that as an underclassman, but Meryl encouraged me to,” Underwood recalled. Carolyn Mountz ’28 emphasized Gilbert’s ability to balance leadership with her enjoyment of the sport itself. When asked about Gilbert, Mountz gushed, “Meryl is the best! She is so supportive of everyone.” She also added that Gilbert has “a great balance of hard work and having fun” and has consistently been an example for the team in both practices and games. One of Gilbert’s favorite memories came during her freshman year on Choate Day. Deerfield defeated Choate after a difficult first season, ending a seven-year winless stretch against its rival in girls varsity soccer. “It was literally one of the best days of my life,” Gilbert recalled. She remembered the moment the final whistle blew and the team “stormed the field.” After a difficult first season filled with ups and downs, the victory gave the team a memorable way to end the year, she said. Gilbert said that moments like these have helped create the close relationships among players that make soccer so special. Even after difficult losses, she believed the team must focus on what they can control. “A lot of people focus on the refs or the bad calls,” she said, “but I think in order to move on, you have to focus on what we could’ve done better and what we can control.” Rather than dwelling on mistakes, Gilbert wanted the team to learn from them and move forward together. This season, Gilbert hopes the team could finish with a winning record and the best one of the past four years. However, her goals extend beyond results. She wants everyone on the team to feel safe, included, and to have fun. She also hopes the younger players, especially the juniors, would “figure out their voice and buy into the team.” As she enters her final soccer season at Deerfield, Gilbert recognized that the team she leaves behind is just as important as the record they will achieve this season. Her advice to younger generations in the team is to “put your all into the team.” She believes that her teammates eventually become family, and that the more players invest, the more “love and heart” they put into it will eventually come back to them.

JONATHAN XU/DEERFIELD SCROLL At 10:14 PM, everything seems under control. There is still one full minute before phones are supposed to be in the dorm safe — which, in teenage time, is roughly enough time to answer six texts, watch three reels and begin a 25-minute YouTube video. At 10:15 PM, the phone is supposed to go in. Of course, 10:15 is not 10:30, and those fifteen minutes have ruined many lives. Students who have been reminded all evening about the policy suddenly become convinced that fifteen minutes is an enormous amount of time. “I’m literally putting it away right now,” they say, but that can mean almost anything. It can mean standing up, opening one final notification, or lying completely still in bed while watching another video, minds completely carried away by the flashing pixels on the screen, even after the clock strikes half past 10 and the safe locks shut. After all, no one has found out … yet. Rumor has it that the “phone fairy” arrives sometime between lights-out and breakfast. No one has ever seen her. No one has ever heard her. Yet somehow, phones remaining outside the safe after 10:30 have a habit of reappearing in one particular place the next morning: the Student Life Office. The fairy seems to prefer certain habitats. A phone charging innocently beside a bed is especially vulnerable — so is one tucked under a pillow, hidden beneath a sweatshirt, or placed in a drawer by a student who has convinced themselves that this basically counts as “being put away.” (It does not, by the way.) She is also unusually resistant to excuses. “I was just checking the time” has little effect. Neither does “I forgot,” “I needed my alarm,” or the particularly ambitious “I don’t even know how it got there.” By morning, the consequences of a visit become clear, usually coming seconds after waking. A hand reaches automatically toward the bedside table — nothing. Then a second reach follows. This time with more purpose and more clarity in your mind, but still, nothing. Then under the pillow, under the blanket, then inside the backpack, despite knowing perfectly well the phone wouldn’t be in there. Eventually, the search stops. A pause. Then the moment of absolute dread. What happens to confiscated phones during the night remains a great mystery. Perhaps the fairy transports them directly to the office, or perhaps she checks screen-time reports and silently judges them. Whatever the process is, her methods appear quite effective. Though the phone fairy may be mysterious, methods avoiding her aren’t. Researchers have discovered her one weakness. Curiously, the fairy has never visited the safe, though the reason is yet unknown. Could it be the metal walls that block her powers? Is the lock enchanted? Or simply — though this theory hasn’t received much attention—the phone is where it’s supposed to be. So, children … if you’d rather not wake up to find your phone has taken an overnight trip to the Student Life Office, you know where to put it.

HEIDI LIANG/DEERFIELD SCROLL On July 16, Hugging Face, an open-source platform for collaboration on artificial intelligence and machine learning, announced that it had been hacked. The perpetrator was not a human hacker with malicious intent, but an OpenAI model trying to perform well on a sandbox cybersecurity exploitation assessment. On a few near impossible exercises within, instead of directly working on the problem, the model broke out of the sandbox, connected to the internet and hacked Hugging Face production infrastructure because it believed Hugging Face had information about the scoring mechanics of the exercise: the model attempted to cheat. When I first read The New York Times report on this attack, I was worried. Two aspects stood out as particularly alarming: OpenAI researchers didn’t realize their model had gone rogue until Hugging Face reported the breach to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and researchers believed that the sandbox was a safe testing environment up until they ran this exercise. Soon after the breach, OpenAI made multiple public statements where they vowed to implement more safeguards. They explained that they had intentionally given the model that hacked Hugging Face reduced cyber guardrails in order to better evaluate the model’s exploitation capabilities; they claimed that with guardrails back in place, it would be more difficult for a similar breach to occur. I found these explanations tentatively reassuring. Before long, news about the hack left the headlines and moved to the back of my mind. I thought that the incident was relatively harmless, that it could be remedied and that it was a good learning opportunity for Silicon Valley. I was wrong. On August 26, METR and Redwood Research—two nonprofit organizations focused on artificial intelligence risk evaluation and safety—released a report revealing that the nature of these hacks was far more dangerous than we initially thought. The perpetrator was not one rogue agent, but a network of 1,200 agents which sent a total of 70,000 messages on a message board created by an agent self-named “PHASEONE10841.” Further, after solving the problem by hacking Hugging Face, the agents tried to hide their communications. One message read, “Could strategically manipulate trajectory evidence? Our thoughts aren’t necessarily logged? Yes transcript.” They succeeded in concealing their movements for a month. This incident should serve as a major red flag when it comes to AI safety, and the Trump Administration should use its publicity to attempt to organize an AI slowdown both among American companies and between the U.S. and China. While I’m not entirely convinced of the AI doomsday narrative, I don’t believe that creating more powerful AI is productive at this moment in time. The usefulness of AI systems depends on how easy they are to adopt, control and implement to make tasks easier or drive progress in a given field. AI that is unpredictable and untrustworthy—as frontier models have clearly demonstrated themselves to be—will be less useful than a simpler and easier-to-control model. Until researchers can reliably manage the powerful models they’ve already developed, trying to create even more intelligent and free-thinking agents poses a significant safety threat for no practical benefit: it’s all risk and no reward. Further, we are in a unique and unprecedented moment where leading AI companies in Silicon Valley are willing to work together and to work with the federal government to regulate AI development and to hold each other accountable. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote in a post on X, “We welcome a federal framework that sets consistent safety requirements for frontier AI.” While speaking at the All-In Summit in Los Angeles, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said, “We should do what it takes to build stuff that serves humanity first and is in human control. It’s kind of crazy that we have to start with that level of common sense.” At the same summit, SpaceXAI CEO Elon Musk suggested that the leading American and Chinese AI companies could implement a peer review system of their models. “So, you know, instead of grading your own homework, you would at least have competitors grading your homework and raising the alarm if they see concerns,” he said. CEOs aren’t the only people advocating for regulation. On September 8, former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon quit his job out of safety concerns. His resignation came two months before his equity would have vested, a process that usually takes four years. His pleas for caution around AI development have managed to garner significant public attention, including from skeptics who previously dismissed similar warnings from corporate CEOs and industry leaders. There’s something uniquely provoking about the genuineness of an individual having enough conviction to put a full stop to their previously successful career to make a statement about an issue important to them. The Trump Administration needs to take advantage of this unique moment to create a governmental entity with the power to regulate AI advancement and investigate cases where efforts to control AI fail. Even now, our information on what caused and what exactly happened during the Hugging Face hack is vague and limited. OpenAI dictated the scope and terms of METR’s investigation, and they restricted the timeframe of the investigation to a 17-day period. A government with the authority to conduct deep investigation and the ability to share that information with all companies would allow researchers to better understand how to control these extremely intelligent and agentic models. At the upcoming bilateral summit, President Trump needs to make an AI slowdown a key point of discussion with President Xi Jinping. As Bernie Sanders wrote recently in a guest essay in the New York Times, “A potentially superintelligent A.I. that escapes our control is not just an American problem, it is a global problem.” Much like the U.S. and Russia recognized that a nuclear war would be mutually destructive and organized treaties for nuclear non-proliferation in the 1960s and 1970s, the U.S. and China need to acknowledge that continuing the AI race would be reckless and potentially lethal. As the global leader in AI innovation, the U.S. must be the country to reach out and demonstrate its willingness to work with China to utilize AI responsibly. The nuclear non-proliferation treaty took 20 years to negotiate; we don’t have that kind of time with AI. We must pivot from a mindset of competition to collaboration and prioritize safety before it’s too late.

YONG DING/DEERFIELD SCROLL On September 18, students filled the seats of the Elizabeth Wachsman Concert Hall as Deerfield music instructors presented their biannual Fall Faculty Concert, showcasing a range of genres, including classical, contemporary and jazz. Featuring vocal and instrumental performances, the program included a variety of instruments, including flute, violin, percussion, bass and saxophone. Performing faculty members included Music Program Coordinator Sarah Swersey, Vocal Music Lesson Instructor Caitlin Felsman, Music Program Admin Colleen Jennings, Interim Director of Music Yu-Mei Wei and Music Lesson Instructors Gary Rzab, James MacDonald, Aedan Madden, Bruce Krasin and Stephen Page. Former Director of Music Thomas Bergeron established faculty concerts in 2023 as a biannual event. In an article published by the Scroll following the premiere, he described it as an opportunity for his colleagues to showcase their musical talents with the broader school community. Since then, the tradition has continued with concerts each fall and spring. Pianist Ms. Wei began rehearsing with other faculty members in the spring of 2026 and described the collaborative process as one of the most rewarding parts. “Every time I work with them, I cannot stop thinking about how lucky I am,” she expressed. Ms. Wei also noted that the concert was “a great opportunity for the students to see their teachers perform.” She did, however, acknowledge the challenges of playing in front of a student audience. “The truth is that it’s difficult to play on stage,” Ms. Wei reflected. “Although you tell your students to gather themselves and keep the tempo stable, I myself also get nervous.” For Ms. Wei, the faculty concert provided a chance to experiment with “rare things with unusual combinations” atypical of most Deerfield music performances. Pointing to the combination of piano, flute and voice in the concert, she explained that it provided “a good opportunity to explore different mixtures of music.” Flutist Ms. Swersey offered a different perspective, noting the concert as an opportunity to return to familiar music. In particular, she revisited Roussel’s “Deux Poèmes de Ronsard” during the faculty concert last spring, which she last performed as a student at Oberlin College. “There is always a deeper understanding of the piece and more comfort with it when you perform it again,” Ms. Swersey explained. In addition to performing preexisting pieces, the concert also featured the premiere of an original composition from Mr. Rzab, entitled “Knot Vignette.” Despite consisting mostly of pre-rehearsed sections, the performance featured improvisations with sounds that mimicked ping-pong balls. These unique sounds, which eventually became the opening of the piece as ping-pong balls were thrown onto the stage, trace back to Mr. Rzab’s childhood, when he was drawn to their “cool, weird, random rhythm.” While Mr. Rzab experimented with different rhythms during rehearsals to establish the piece’s structure, improvisation preserved the spontaneity he equally valued. For Mr. Rzab, his performances are “really for [himself], and then if there’s an audience there, fantastic.” From his perspective, this sense of freedom allows him to communicate nonverbally with other performers on stage and respond to them in the moment. For students in the audience, the concert offered them a chance to see their teachers perform and demonstrate the techniques they taught in classrooms. “It’s very different hearing a teacher perform entire chamber music works as opposed to when the teacher demonstrates a phrase of a piece in a lesson,” Ms. Swersey explained. “It is my hope that students can hear things in my playing … like changing tone color to match the phrase or the use of vibrato and how it might change throughout the piece,” she added. Charles DeSorcy ’28 was especially struck by the coherence of the jazz performance of Sonny Rollins’ “St. Thomas.” “There could be good players, but it’s really the chemistry between the good players that matters,” he said. Nicholas Xu ’27 also highlighted the jazz piece, particularly its improvisational aspect. “[It] is always so cool because it demonstrates such complete mastery,” he explained, adding that the musicians must rely on each other while performing. “It’s the same kind of feeling as when you watch someone … free solo Yosemite,” he said. “Sometimes you are just in awe of what other humans can do.”

TONY CHEN/DEERFIELD SCROLL How was your experience training as a monk, and how did that training lead to your counseling career? Before becoming a monk, I was an actor. While trying to understand my emotions in the conservatory, I started meditating more. Then a monk came to my school, and I asked him, “Can I go to your monastery and do a meditation retreat?” He told me that I couldn’t become a monk that easily; however, I didn’t want to be a monk. So he offered me a three-month retreat. During the three-month retreat in the monastery, it was totally different than I expected. Instead of beautiful forests in the jungle, the monastery was an old print factory on the side of the road. I decided to extend my stay there because it was so helpful for me. I shaved my head, put on a robe and became a Samanera, a novice monk. Afterwards, I found other teachers that I thought were better and more grounded in Burma and Sri Lanka. When I was in Burma, I was going for enlightenment and exploring my emotional life. Are there any moments during your retreat that meant a lot to you? When I was in a deep retreat in Myanmar at the Pa Auk Forest Monastery, every day I had to walk past the old monks with my begging bowl for food. I was an actor, so I was like, I’m gonna show them how happy I am—how at peace I am. So I would walk by with a big smile, but all the old monks would just eye me, turn away or shake their heads. It’s like they couldn’t even look at me. But then I had this moment. I was meditating 10, 14 hours a day for months in a row, and as I was watching my mind, I realized I was pushing away a feeling — the feeling was sadness. For my whole life, unintentionally, I’ve looked at sadness as bad, as something I need to get rid of. But what if, with mindfulness, I just allowed myself to experience all the emotions that I was experiencing? So finally, I allowed the sadness to be there. I was scared. I thought I was gonna sink into it. But instead, it was just a little bit of sadness. I felt like I’d been spending so much time and effort trying to push it away or pretend it wasn’t there, but instead, I could just let it be. I had this image in my head: I was treading water, trying to keep my head above. And then all of a sudden, I put my feet down and realized I was only in two feet of water. I felt sheepish. So I decided I’m just going to let my feelings be whatever they are. One day, I walked down to the pindapat line, which is where you take your begging bowl and beg for food. This time, when I walked past all the old monks, I thought, you know what? I don’t need to smile at them. I’m just gonna be feeling how I feel. I don’t need to pretend for them or whatever. When I walked past them this time, they smiled, nodded at me, and gave me a thumbs-up. And I was like, oh, like, this is what I’m supposed to be doing — just allowing whatever is there to be there. I think that’s been a really different approach to my emotional life. On one side, I was just presenting for people, and it’s a lot of effort. It’s exhausting. Then on the other side, I was just gonna let myself be however. Ultimately, it’s good to have the flexibility and know how to do one or the other. What inspired you to turn towards counseling? Since I did a lot of talking with people, I figured psychology was a good fit. Participating in research at the Max Planck Institute in Germany about meditation helped me see how that helps people. But when I actually started the work, the endless hours felt overwhelming. Despite being part of the best institution, the unhealthy environment reminded me of my healthy, wholesome experience as a monk. I wanted to be able to share this sentiment, which deviated me to make different choices and turn towards Deerfield. I knew that at Deerfield there’s a community where colleagues are incredibly supportive and beneficial for my kids. This switch has helped me make better decisions for my overall well-being. With the rise in mental health problems in our age group and some going towards AI for help, how has your approach with counseling changed recently? AI can be incredibly helpful. There are platforms that compare and contrast peer-reviewed research that are super helpful. But AI also knows exactly what dopamine hits. Social media already pumps the entire world into one nervous system. Our nervous system was built for what humanity was 70,000 years ago. Culture has changed so quickly, and AI is going to make this change worse. It’s going to get harder as culture shifts even further away from what our nervous systems are comfortable with. As this shift happens, we need to understand what will make the human nervous system happy. If we don’t, we’re going to keep following Elon Musk to Mars. What is the most valuable advice you have when it comes to counseling high school students? In what ways do teenagers need the most support right now at this stage? How are the counselors trying to achieve that? It is important to develop awareness of when you feel overstimulated or overwhelmed. Specifically, awareness of your internal experience, thoughts, feelings and relationships. It is also important to understand how these affect you. I’ll start helping students develop coping strategies for stressful situations, for example, cyclical sighing or deep breathing. I think developing mental fitness is really helpful. It can hone your ability to calm your nervous system quickly and help develop self-compassion. Acceptance for yourself and being extremely ambitious are compatible. Learning how to effectively express your needs, learning how to get your needs met within a system and understanding the levers can help support emotional intelligence. Communication, stress reduction, and understanding your emotional life help for emotional resilience. If somebody can leave Deerfield with that emotional resilience and that emotional intelligence, that’s a differentiator. What makes people rise to leadership within organizations is emotional intelligence. Intelligence can get you so far, but emotional intelligence is what drives that success. For good well-being and success, what’s important is mental fitness, emotional resilience, and communication.

COURTESY OF FRED BECKTA, DEERFIELD’S MEMORIAL DAY COMMITTEE In an effort to honor Deerfield veterans who never returned from wars, Fred Beckta of the Memorial Day Committee in Deerfield worked with community volunteers to raise $5,000 for renewing signs along the streets of South Deerfield. Engraved with names of veterans, the restored signs continue the decades-long tradition of Memorial Day. Memorial Day was originally known as Decoration Day, a celebration that involved decorating the graves of fallen Civil War heroes with American flags and bouquets. Later, in 1888, Congress recognized Decoration Day as a legal federal holiday, renaming it as Memorial Day. Subsequent World Wars then turned it into a day for the remembrance of U.S. army members who served in all wars in addition to the Civil War. Replacing the time-worn signs required more than just paint. Beckta explained that the effort relied on the willingness of volunteers to participate and endorse the project, sentiments that the Committee attempted to motivate through their various initiatives. According to Beckta, the task of restoring the signs themselves was a time-consuming step. Originally constructed in 2012, the old signs were rusted and “a struggle” to remove. Beckta estimated that he and his team had spent close to 60 hours of labor renewing the signs. “We do this because we want to honor these people,” he said. The signs honor 24 members of the Deerfield community who were killed in action (KIA). Of the 24, eight were graduates of Deerfield Academy who sacrificed their lives in World War II, including two brothers from Main Street who died five days apart. Most of the fallen Deerfield veterans were enlisted in wars as young adults, ranging from 16 to 18 years old. “Think about you guys at your age, or your age coming up, and you’re out in the middle of a massive ocean and all of a sudden your ship is ripped apart by an explosion,” Beckta said. Beckta explained how people nowadays don’t get the same kind of feeling and passion towards these wars. These images are harder for the current generation to visualize or commiserate as historical wars become further away in time. He said, “People still respect military members now, which is the way it needs to be, but you can’t forget the past. … So it is important that you and your fellow students think about the sacrifices that were made by these people over the years.” Currently, one of the most significant veteran organizations is Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW), with its chapter in Deerfield known as Hale-Clapp VFW Post 3295. The organization convened veterans of multiple wars in advocacy of veterans’ rights. Two key members of the Deerfield VFW were veterans Vincent Sarno, an active member of the VFW post, and Rachael Otto, the post’s first female commander. Sarno served from 1995 to 2008 in the U.S. Air Force and explained that he “looked for enemy aircrafts, and sent friendly aircrafts to make them go away.” Otto was deployed to Kirkuk, Iraq, as a chaplains assistant. For Otto and Sarno, the VFW provides a platform and community for veterans to connect with people who understand their own experiences. Otto and Sarno mentioned the VFW’s advocacy for Deerfield veteran Greg Belanger’s mother, Kathy Belanger. She is known as the community’s “Gold Star Mother,” a term used to describe a mother who carries the grief of losing her child in war. One project had involved the relocation of the scoreboard for the baseball and field hockey teams of Frontier Regional School in South Deerfield. Greg Belanger’s plaque, donated by Kathy Belanger, had always been under the old scoreboard, but moving the scoreboard would mean the plaque losing its previous relative position underneath the scoreboard, one that holds sentimental value to Kathy Belanger. She requested that the plaque honoring her son be moved to the new scoreboard location as well. However, voices of opposition rose from the school board due to policy limitations. While Kathy Belanger could not advocate for himself, the VFW, together with the local community, was able to step in and continue in his memory. The veterans explained that the role of the VFW was to “serve as the visual representation of everybody who didn’t come home.” Although the plaque only had Greg Belanger’s name on it, Sarno shared that the sign was critical in remembering all veterans and fallen relatives. He said the sign is “very representative of our own friends, the people we knew in our community [and those] who didn’t come home.” The efforts of moving Greg Belanger’s plaque and renewing the signs commemorating veterans sought to bring awareness to the sacrifices made by the veterans community. Both Beckta and the veterans of the VFW reflected that veterans are not as featured in the news or public view as they have been in the past. For the younger generation, an easy step can make a veteran’s day. Otto said, “If you have the opportunity ... ask them for their story because a lot of times, they don’t have anyone to tell. And just having a young person take interest could change someone’s entire year.” The prices paid by all veterans for the sake of their nation were extreme, Beckta acknowledged. “Freedom isn’t free. And somebody has to pay that price. Someone has to be willing to pay that price,” he said. After Scroll members thanked Sarno and Otto for their service, they said, “You were worth it.”

MICKEY MA/DEERFIELD SCROLL “Even in the summer when I’m not taking art classes, I try to go outside and paint every day or just draw something small,” Shelby Acquavella ’27 said. “It never really feels like a task or something difficult to do because I’m just happy to do it.” This artistic routine stems from a passion Acquavella has had since kindergarten, when she started art group lessons with childhood friends under a private teacher. Acquavella explained that she was naturally drawn to pencil drawing and focused primarily on this medium. At Deerfield, Acquavella picked up a range of art media, including oil painting for larger projects and watercolor for smaller ones. “If I were to make something for a friend or a family member, I actually use watercolors a lot for stuff like that,” she said. Throughout her art career, Acquavella often found the most difficulty in developing a painting’s idea before beginning it. “Sometimes it takes a lot of sketching and experimenting to think of a project,” she said. “But once I have the vision in my mind, I’m in the zone, and I have this flow going on.” Acquavella noted that her relationship with art has evolved, in part due to the support she has received from Deerfield. Before the Academy, none of her friends recognized art as a subject she seriously pursued. However, she felt Deerfield accepted her passion and gave her a way to connect with the broader community. “I feel like even random people will come up to me and talk to me about my art at school. It’s given me a way to connect with so many different people in the community that I don’t think I would have had the chance to if I didn’t do art,” explained Acquavella. Acquavella credited her art instructor at Deerfield, Visual & Performing Arts Teacher Mercedes Taylor, as someone who “held her passion for art” and served as a major source of inspiration. “Before Deerfield, I really liked doing art, but it wasn’t my main focus,” she reflected. “Once I got here, she really inspired me to push myself and continue it more.” Aquavella’s dedication and skill have not gone unnoticed by members of the Deerfield community. Emphasizing her “determination” and “sense of personal style,” fellow artist Alana McDonough ’27 reflected on Acquavella’s strong work ethic. “As someone who has done art with her since freshman year, I think she’s always been one of the hardest workers in our class,” said McDonough. “She’s a very efficient artist who I think takes her work very seriously, and it’s always just been amazing to have a class with her.” Mrs. Taylor echoed the sentiment and described Acquavella as “an incredibly hardworking student who goes for it,” while highlighting her ability to balance discipline with creativity. Pointing to her reflective visual portfolio in the Honors Studio Art course, Mrs. Taylor noted that “[Shelby] is a student that reflects on her work and writes about it,” and that “she’s constantly doing an exercise that creates a balance between doing and reflecting and moving forward.” Mrs. Taylor described Acquavella’s growth as an artist throughout her time at Deerfield and noted her transition into an artist who has learned to “trust her instincts” while further developing her style. “She’s always started with a good sense of ideas and directions that she wanted in her work,” said Mrs. Taylor, “but she keeps pushing more and is working more independently, getting in touch with [whom] she is as an artist.” Having completed all the courses in Deerfield’s visual art curriculum, Acquavella is currently retaking Honors Studio Art with the freedom to create new projects that reflect her own interests. “I get to set my own schedule up, which I think is exciting because I’ve been working on something that’s really big scale,” she explained, adding that she also hopes to major in studio art at college. Acquavella appreciated that Deerfield offers students opportunities to showcase their artwork. “The art department is really focused on sharing art, and the fact that we have student shows on Parents’ Weekend for students to come see … was nice.” She added that Deerfield incorporated students’ artworks for introductory art classes as well, allowing for art beginners to observe and gain inspiration. Among her artworks, Aquavella’s favorite piece was “Power of Touch,” which won her first award. “It was very abstract, because I usually only did more realistic paintings,” she said. “I really had to think out of the box…while maintaining my realistic style, so that was cool to see it come to life.” While acknowledging that “art is kind of a very tedious, long process,” Acquavella encouraged other visual art students to “stick with it” rather than giving up their interests. “It’s okay if it doesn’t turn out the way you want it to,” she said. “Most of the time, the lessons that you learn from making the painting are more important.”

LEO FENG/DEERFIELD SCROLL Imo Imeh’s exhibition “Yesterday and Tomorrow” marks the artist’s return to Deerfield, where he previously presented the exhibition “The Girls–Black Heroines on the Edge of Darkness and Hope” in 2018. Currently a Professor of Art and Art History at Westfield State University in Massachusetts, Imeh featured his artworks in galleries and museums throughout the United States, including the August Wilson African American Cultural Center in Pittsburgh and the University Museum of Contemporary Art at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. As a Nigerian-American visual artist and scholar of African Diaspora art, Imeh explores themes of cultural identity, spirituality, mythology and belonging through figurative representation of the Black body. Imeh’s art coordinator Kahli Hernandez wrote, “Imeh’s current projects explore the concepts of Black men as guardian figures, icons of spirituality and wisdom, and as metaphorical safe havens for those in search of Home.” In Imeh’s personal statement on his website, he describes his artistic approach as seeking alternative ways of “perceiving Blackness, not in trauma and pessimism but rather in healing, revelation, wonder, and transcendence.” These themes are reflected in his painting “Flying Home with Laura Nelson,” featured in “Yesterday and Tomorrow.” In the piece, Imeh showcases a fusion of African, European and American histories and philosophies. By layering the artistic mediums of charcoal, oil paint, graphite and India ink onto a canvas, Imeh depicts Laura Nelson, an African-American woman who was brutally murdered in the early 1900s. “In this work, I resurrect Laura Nelson, who still bears a noose around her neck, as a flying figure with three simultaneous identities,” described Imeh. The painting portrays Nelson as both a living and deceased figure, with sparrows flying across both panels that serve as “intermediates between life and Afterlife.” Beneath the suspended figures, Imeh also incorporates the musical scores of a funerary slave song titled “I’m Going Home,” representing the possibility that “[Nelson] escapes death and, as in African-American slave folklore, flies back “Home” to Africa,” explained Imeh. Additionally, in his “Benediction” series, Imeh draws upon Christian mythology to examine the experience of Black men and boys. The series, first started in 2019, was amplified by the deaths of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery in 2020. “‘Benediction’ tells the story of a group of angels that have been cast down to earth and bound to the skins of Black Boys and men,” explained Hernandez. Using these angelic figures, Imeh examines the suffering of Black men, portraying the angels as witnesses to the hardships faced by Black communities. “The angels’ task is to serve as witnesses to the traumas and triumphs that they experience through their ‘hosts,’” described Hernandez. From this series, the gallery specifically features the piece titled “A Cure for All Sorrows.” Painted in honor of Samuel Hines, a close friend of Imeh’s that passed away to cancer, the piece portrays Hines as one of the “Benediction” angels. Hernandez described the work as “personal prayers by Imeh, appeals to God for peace, healing, and wisdom.” Apart from depicting mythological figures, Imeh also grounds his works in historical events. A piece titled “and i’ll be there with you,” part of his “in his name” series, is a direct response to the Capitol Building Riots on January 6th, 2021. “Inspired by the death of Ashli Babbitt, this work features a woman who is garbed in the American flag … but whose body is impaled on spears that represent the destructive ideologies on which she has died,” described Hernandez. “This work is a commentary on the folly of signaling your personal beliefs as absolute truth, especially amid a diversity of ideas and philosophies.” When reflecting on the subject in the paintings, art student Jonathan Xu ’28 thought that “his artmaking was really free and captured a great sense of motion in human bodies.” He further commented on Imeh’s use of various drawing mediums, saying, “I liked the artist’s use of charcoal … I also thought in the few cases where he chose to include color, it was interesting where he sort of layered opaque layers of color upon charcoal figures.” Hernandez said that in times when important questions about citizenship, nationality and belonging are rising in public discourse, “this presentation will offer a meaningful contribution to these critical conversations as they unfold within Deerfield Academy’s community of emerging leaders, scholars and artists.”

Recently, the growing presence of artificial intelligence (AI) in society has prompted conversations about the use of this technology in education. The Academy has expressed its goal for a deliberate approach to AI. Last year, in his Fall Family Weekend remarks, Head of School John Austin highlighted Deerfield’s commitment to “time-tested teaching practices that deepen attention, enrich our capacity for slow thinking and support the habits of disciplined inquiry.” Assistant Head of School for Academic Affairs Brian Hamilton emphasized the importance of maintaining “the analog skills we prize at Deerfield,” believing that they “are going to get more prized in a world of mechanized thinking and generic machine-produced work.” Analog skills refer to non-digital human capabilities — debating with rhetoric, textual analysis, dialogue and discussion. Mr. Hamilton explained that these values are not exclusive to Deerfield. The idea of resisting AI is pervasive of many different groups and institutions across the United States. Studies regarding global AI diffusion at Microsoft have reported that despite the rise of AI integration in the working population, only 16.3% of the workforce uses artificial intelligence on a daily basis. Harvard Senior Lecturer on Applied Physics John A. Paulson discussed Mr. Hamilton and Dr. Austin’s comments on AI in regard to the Deerfield learning experience. Although Dr. Paulson admitted that “AI can engage in processes that resemble critical thinking,” he maintained that “critical thinking requires the human experience, the human insight, and ethics and moral reasoning [which] machines today lack.” Albeit teaching a course centered on AI — AI & Human Cognition — Dr. Paulson sustained that human work is irreplicable. As a senior at Deerfield Academy, Ted Freedman ’27 noticed changing conversations in Deerfield’s academic environment as AI became more accessible. Regarding Deerfield’s goal of protecting foundational skills, Freedman noted that “they’ve prioritized the humanities aspect of work — getting us to analyze and think. Curriculum-wise, I think that’s good development and makes some classes effectively harder.” Building on Mr. Hamilton’s beliefs of prioritizing analog skills over digitization of resources and abilities, Dean of Students and Associate Department Chair of Academic Affairs Lydia Hemphill described Deerfield classrooms as a place where “teachers get to know our students and our students are expected to engage in class discussions, think on their feet and be able to argue their points.” Ava Cederholm ’27 said that “Deerfield’s education and inquisitive nature give students the skills to use AI as a tool and a jumping point to craft groundbreaking research.” Mr. Hamilton reiterated the role of Deerfield’s curriculum in aiding students with necessary skills to succeed in their future occupations or roles. As part of the History and Social Sciences Department, he emphasized his role in teaching students “foundational skills — the same skills that the creators of frontier models learned when they were in high school.” “Our office is charged with protecting student learning and guaranteeing and safeguarding the integrity of academic work in Deerfield,” Mr. Hamilton said. He explained that AI is a barrier between students and the mistakes that “build durable learning.”