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THIJS WITTINK/DEERFIELD SCROLL On April 25, the Deerfield Math Competition brought together 87 middle school students from the Eaglebrook School, Berkshire Academy, Cardigan Mountain School, the Bement School, The Academy at Charlemont, JFK Middle School, and Lesley Ellis School to participate in a multi-round math competition organized by students from the Deerfield Math Club. This year’s record-breaking participant turnout marked a milestone for the event since its creation in 2017. Math Teacher and Faculty Advisor for the Deerfield Math Club Forest Reid explained that preparations for the competition began months in advance. Members of the Math Club divided responsibilities across multiple roles. These roles included problem writing, website management, and logistics. “Problem writing is the core of it, and it is really, really hard,” said Mr. Reid. He also noted that the logistics aspect was a “huge undertaking” and a “big organizational task.” According to Mr. Reid, the event was inspired by students who participated in the Harvard-MIT Mathematics Tournament, a student-run competition for high schoolers. The DMC follows a similar structure, featuring multiple rounds, including an Individual Round, a team-based “Guts Round,” and a final Countdown Round, newly added to this year’s competition procedure. “I think we could do some more of this format in the future,” said DMC Student Logistics Director Jewel Suh ’28. Members of the Math Club created original problems for the competition since February. The group collaborated during club meetings to review proposed problems and work through them to create a coherent answer key. “Each problem writer can choose their category, but we try to keep the number of problems balanced across all categories,” said DMC Student Director Torge Blunck ’27. According to Mr. Reid, writing competition-level questions differs from preparing class assessments. “It’s not like writing a math test for a class,” he explained, “You want some [problems] that almost everybody gets…and some that almost nobody gets, because then you wouldn’t have a winner.” The Individual Round required students to solve eight problems independently within 45 minutes. The Guts Round, modeled after the format used by HMMT, required teams to work together, solve problems in sets, and submit answers sequentially with scores displayed in real time. Instead of having two separate individual rounds as in previous competitions, the final Countdown Round, modeled after another competition called MATHCOUNTS, was used to determine the individual winner. A bracket-style system was used to mark the advancement of winners through each matchup based on speed and accuracy. Reflecting on the effectiveness of the new format, Blunck said, “We thought it was an exciting finish to the day, so we plan to keep this change in future years.” Aside from problem writing, other members of the Math Club worked on organizing the competition’s logistics. The team coordinated with schools, managed registrations, and compiled competition materials. During the competition, the team also managed a set of spreadsheets to track scores, compile results, and generate rankings across rounds. For students thinking about joining the DMC team, Suh suggested, “DMC is a good opportunity to not only work on your math, but also your leadership skills…It’s a really fun time; it’s a good group of people.” Looking ahead, Mr. Reid said future improvements will likely focus on refining logistical systems, such as keeping different spreadsheets to gather results faster. He also noted ongoing efforts to streamline communication with participating schools and reduce the amount of last-minute adjustments during the event. “I think we had a really nice setup this year, and there’s always a little refinement that can happen,” he said.

CELINE CHANG/DEERFIELD SCROLL President and CEO of the Rockefeller Capital Management Greg Fleming joined Board of Trustees President Leila Govi ’93 in the Caswell Library following sit-down dinner on Thursday, April 23, to discuss the evolving landscape of global finance and leadership. Mr. Fleming offered his inside perspective on the world of investment banking and fielded questions from Ms. Govi, partner at Egerton Capital, an investment management firm in London. She began by introducing Mr. Fleming as a “rockstar in the finance world, [and] one of the most respected leaders and a true legend on Wall Street.” Mr. Fleming is a frequent visiting lecturer at the Yale Law School with extensive business experience at Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and currently, Rockefeller & Co. He began by reflecting on Deerfield Academy’s impact on his daughter, who graduated in 2014: “Leadership is incredibly important in every aspect of life, and the leadership that you all have with Leila as president of the board and Dr. Austin as head of school is best in class.” In response to Ms. Govi’s question about the repercussions of AI on the job market in the finance industry, he further underscored the importance of institutions like Deerfield Academy, saying, “The ability to apply interpretation and analysis is going to be more highly valued. You come out of Deerfield Academy and you learn … to think, to adapt, [and] to make decisions with a complicated set of facts.” The conversation delved into professional culture in the finance industry and the character Mr. Fleming looks for in job applicants. He emphasized the importance of collaboration, urging students to “be the high-road person. Have people want to be in the room with you. Collaborate well, and then you’ll start to lead well. [Leadership] comes down to … supporting and highlighting the people around you for their strengths.” This focus on character resonated with faculty and students, including History and Social Science Department Chair Brian Hamilton. He noted how Mr. Fleming’s emphasis on soft skills resonated with him. “Mr. Fleming affirmed what Deerfield’s curriculum works to foster in our students–values like critical interpretation and analytical thinking–even in a hard nosed world like that of finance,” Mr. Hamilton said. For him, these values mirrored the culture of Deerfield itself: “We all take responsibility for everything that happens on campus. We think of all students as ours.” Dima Kasumov ’27 spoke for many students when he illustrated his personal appreciation for Mr. Fleming’s perspective. As the founder of the financial markets club (CapX), Kasumov spoke about publicizing the event to over 150 people in economics classes and clubs. With his own interests in the vast world of finance, he offered his insights on the talk. “The idea that Mr. Fleming went into law and ended up as one of the most world-renowned financiers is very reassuring. It’s proof of the fact that not everything is linear and that you don’t need to follow the institutional path into finance,” he said. Mr. Fleming leaned into the idea of a non-linear path, noting that his own career looked nothing like he expected as a young graduate. He urged students to embrace the “atypical path” and prepare for the “best laid plans to change.” This flexibility, he asserted, is the ultimate defense against the shifting job markets. Addressing the rise of AI in the industry, Mr. Fleming admitted many “rote” jobs would be at risk, but the ability to apply analysis would quickly become a standout characteristic in the finance and business sector. He reassured the room that the core values of Deerfield’s education, along with assuming a character of collaboration, would be integral to long-term success. Additionally, he challenged students to look towards mentors who “push and prod” them to excel and be the “high-road person” with peers and competitors. As the evening drew to a close, Mr. Fleming stressed that although the tools and landscape of finance are shifting, the foundational values that Deerfield fosters will remain a permanent tool. As members of CapX and Deerfield students engaged with the conversation between Ms. Govi and Mr. Fleming, the latter ended the night with a sentiment from Nelson Mandela, a South African statesman and president: “It always seems impossible until it is done.”

During Spring Family Weekend, my English class held a parent-student symposium on Helena Maria Viramontes’s novel Under the Feet of Jesus. This novel explores the life of Estrella, a child who tries to navigate life as the daughter of migrant farmworkers in the Central Valley of California. The book is unforgiving to its characters and their circumstances. They wake before dawn, working under the blazing sun, and fight for basic human dignities that, by virtue of their availability, Deerfield students don’t have to think about: shelter, a meal, and the ability to remain in one place. We spent the entire class discussing the characters’ difficulties and resilience, and what the novel demands of its readers. Then, a parent in the room made a point that stuck with me. The parent pointed out that we’d been talking about the difficulty of undervalued labor as if it were something that exists far away from Deerfield, as if it were happening on the farms of California, at another time, to people who were completely different from us. Underappreciated labor, they remarked, isn’t just about the farmworker. Underappreciated labor is the condition of the nurse, the janitor, the groundskeeper, and all the people who help run this entire institution. I have been thinking about that comment ever since. There is a certain kind of invisibility that becomes attached to competent and consistent labor. Consider the person working in the Greer, who knows your name by heart. Or the groundskeeper who does their job so well that you have never once had to think about walking through snow on your way to class. Or the custodian who cleans the dorm bathrooms quietly, without interruption or acknowledgement. These are not trivial things. They fundamentally support our daily lives and deserve recognition. I have walked past many of these people and said “hello” or “thank you,” but that was it. They would typically offer a warm smile and greet me back, and nothing further would be exchanged between us. In some way, that always bothered me, though I couldn’t quite explain why. It bothered me because I began to realize how little I actually knew about them. I see the same custodians every time I wake up late and slip into the bathroom during first period; they are already there, changing the soap, scrubbing surfaces, making sure the space is clean and functional. The people who handle our laundry. The security guards who are always present when I go to pick up a package or a DoorDash order cheerfully ask, “How is your day going?” with enthusiasm that sometimes makes me feel quietly ashamed of my own. These people have families, histories, stories about where and how they grew up, full lives that exist entirely outside the narrow sliver of them that we ever see. Yet, at Deerfield, we often see only that sliver. Sometimes not even that. Let me be very clear about what this article is not. It is not an indictment. Most of the students here at Deerfield are very polite and nice to people who work for the school. We open doors, we say thank you, and we are considerate. If you were to survey the members of the maintenance and dining hall departments, you would likely find that Deerfield students are, by and large, decent and well-mannered. However, I do believe that kindness and gratitude are different things and that, without quite realizing it, we have begun to confuse the two. True gratitude requires active recognition. It demands the acknowledgment, on a conscious level, of the labor and care that shape the conditions of our lives. Gratitude is not just holding a door. Gratitude is actively registering what you receive and from whom you receive it. I would claim that such attentiveness to surroundings is structurally hard to maintain at a place such as Deerfield. Consider the basic conditions of daily life here. We wake up in heated dormitories; we take walks along paths, some of them heated, already cleared of snow before we get out of bed; we eat food prepared by kitchen staff who come to work well before the dining hall opens. People, we will never meet, clean our classrooms, repair our equipment, and maintain our common rooms, a labor performed so efficiently that we never have to think about it. It doesn’t happen out of nowhere; it’s the result of active labor by actual people, people who, by virtue of their efficiency, are often invisible to us. The issue is not a simple absence of gratitude. Gratitude, in this context, is not merely a feeling but a conscious choice to recognize and appreciate what others do for you and who is doing it. The deeper problem is that comfort has become so permanent a feature of life at Deerfield that it no longer registers as comfort at all. We are not grateful for air. When something has always been there, we stop perceiving it as a gift. Viramontes understood this. Estrella moves through the world with a kind of fierce, exhausting attentiveness. She notices everything, cataloguing each discomfort and each small mercy with equal precision because nothing in her life is guaranteed. That heightened awareness is the direct product of precarity. She sees clearly because she cannot afford not to. We are not in a position of precarity. I am not saying that we need to wish for it, but I wonder whether it’s possible to acquire the kind of vision Estrella has without going through the hardship first, if it’s possible to be aware of the surrounding world without forcing ourselves into a position where we need to be hyper-aware. I am not sure what the answer is. But, I do believe that the question matters. I do not think the solution is reminding yourself to thank the next person you pass in the hallway. This type of prescriptive gratitude is not optimal; it transforms a human relationship into a transaction, a box to check on the way to feel like a considerate person. The gesture becomes about the giver, not the recipient. And an act of gratitude that is primarily about the person performing it is, in some ways, not gratitude at all. The type of gratitude I believe we need is something harder: a sustained practice of attention towards the labor that surrounds us, a genuine desire to see those who take care of us, and to resist the ease of not seeing them. The education that is offered to Deerfield students is unparalleled in the world today. Part of that education should be, in my view, learning to see the whole picture of labor, of the people who get here before we wake up, stay here after we fall asleep, who work tirelessly to provide us with opportunities. Those people aren’t just background; they are the ones who make Deerfield possible; they are the foundation of our community. In the end, Under the Feet of Jesus has no comfortable resolution. Estrella’s life remains harsh and unfulfilled. Viramontes doesn’t give her readers the pleasure of an easy ending. There is a certain honesty in this; she doesn’t give us an excuse. Following her example, I want to be clear that this is not an article with a clear call to action. It is an invitation to sit with a question that I have not fully answered myself: when everything is given to you, how do you learn to actually see it? I do not know. But I think the asking of it is where we begin.

HEIDI LIANG/DEERFIELD SCROLL Dear Reader, Putting pen to paper has never felt so hard. As I sit in my room and attempt to write my final letter to you, I find myself stopping every minute. Memories of my time spent writing for this paper, some going as far back as freshman year, come flooding in. Processing each of these on its own is a joy; reflecting on them collectively, however, pains me as I realize I can never fully convey all that the Scroll has given me in one letter. Nonetheless, I can still offer you a glimpse into my Scroll experience. Hopefully after you read this, you’ll go out there and find something so worth doing for you as the Scroll has been for me; oh, and of course, continue to read The Deerfield Scroll. It is 7:00 p.m. on Monday, September 19, 2022. 14-year-old me struggles to squeeze my 110-pound frame between two burly juniors blocking the door to the Scroll room. Only ten minutes prior, I had shamelessly stopped a random girl on the path to ask her if she knew the way to the basement of the Kendall building. Now that I was there however, every neuron in my brain screamed at me to leave. For one, the atmosphere was terrible. The antique lights bathed the room in a dingy yellow, casting a depressing sensation that consumed me like a cloud. The second, and by far more important motivator however, was how insignificant I felt. The small, shy introvert that still defines me today felt worthless after listening to the taller, more sophisticated editors pitch out article ideas. Yet for some inexplicable reason, I still stayed. It is 9:48 p.m on Friday, February 23, 2024. 15-year-old me sits underneath the same dingy lights that I hated so much a year ago. In front of me, my MacBook is down to its last 10% power, drained by the fifteen tabs I have open: each representing an article I’ve edited since I first arrived at the Scroll room two hours prior. Tired beyond relief, I have a decision to make: either I could borrow a charger from my Editor-in-Chief and continue revising articles, or I could leave the Scroll room now and go back to sleep. For the same inexplicable reason, I borrow a charger and go straight back to work. It is 6:30 a.m on Sunday, March 2, 2025. 16-year-old me rises out of bed and gets ready for the day. Grabbing the stack of newspapers I picked up from the Scroll room the night prior, I head over from OBC to the Koch center: the furthest I can be from the allure of my bed where I copy edit every page of the February issue for the next three hours. By 8:30 a.m. my head is already drooping, yet I resist the urge to sleep and continue diligently marking up the page. I’m barely conscious at this point. I don’t know why I’m doing this instead of sleeping, yet I continue to edit all the same. Today is Tuesday, May 5, 2026. Currently, it is half past one. For the past four hours, as I have struggled to come up with my final letter to you, I have reminisced over my entire Scroll career. In doing so, the same inexplicable motivator that has always brought me back to the Scroll becomes a recurring theme. And only now that my Scroll tenure comes to a close, that I finally realize what the motivator truly was: it was your readership. In freshman year, when I felt worthless and unheard, it was your readership that gave me my worth. In sophomore and junior year, when I contemplated why I did the Scroll when so many of my other friends hung out with each other or had fun on weekend nights, it was because of you that gave me purpose in creating a paper worth reading. And now in my senior spring, when I could be doing a million other things in my final days at the Academy, I chose to spend them writing for this paper because I know you are on the other side reading them. So thank you. Thank you for sticking with me for all four years, for watching me grow from a small, immature 14 year old to a slightly less small, still immature 17 year old. Thank you for giving me a platform to write on, a purpose to create something that is bigger than myself, that transcends my four years here. Thank you for transforming the Scroll room, turning it from a place I once found dim to my favorite spot on campus, a place that contains my most cherished memories of these short Deerfield days. Thank you for allowing me to form forever friendships with the class of 2023 to 2029, for connecting me with some of my best friends throughout high school. For an average kid from a small town in New Jersey, I could never have dreamed of something so spectacular. Yours in Service, John Qi Liu

HEIDI LIANG/DEERFIELD SCROLL Of course, as always, this year’s Deerfield Forum speakers all excelled in their fields. Of course, more than any past Forum, they eagerly debated and examined each other. Of course, their ideas kept students discussing the whole week, an unfathomable length for our attention span. Yet, the debate’s circling around definitions and predictions made the arguments slip by each other, missing the underlying assumptions where disagreement really sprang from. One might protest that debates are just, by nature, quick and shallow. Flashy interruptions can amuse audiences—certainly us—more than thorough elaborations. After all, six-minute openings and four-minute rebuttals simply cannot fit treatises after all. The clock, the crowd, and the cortisol blend into a nervous antagonism, which, with a sprinkle of ego, makes it easier to assume the other side did not fully understand the nuances of our own super cool and original argument. It is, then, only human to either dismiss the opponent with “you’re irrelevant” or merely repeat definitions against the opponent, hoping they finally see our brilliance and agree. You thus might excuse our speakers for not satiating the pedants’ interest in ethics and systemic thinking. But it need not have been so. Fundamentally, the debate’s superficiality reflects the importance of the humanities education and its depth of thinking. Among the debate’s tangents, the “this is about better, not healthier” quip that students groaned at the most was really a misdelivered structural critique. While it may seem like the Con side tried to make the Pro side defend aesthetic gene edits beyond just health edits, underlying this redefinition is the observation that any editing likely trends towards (often Western-skewed) homogeneity. This homogeneity originates from consumerist culture creating a hierarchy of aesthetics that pushes individuals to all desire the same thing, which, because of media power, is often European. This critique can be traced to the 20th-century philosophy of Critical Theory, which broke down the values of art and ethics that 19th century ideologies had believed to be objective truths, pointing out instead that such values were arbitrarily defined by those in power. However, as the Cons hardly engaged with these sociological underpinnings, the audience and the Pros dismissed “better not healthier” as a definition quibble rather than an inevitable corollary of the existing debate. The discussion thus devolved into a duel of comebacks. Missing this layer of normative, humanities-style thinking, each side merely clutched their own definitions rather than debating the more fundamental and meaningful question of whether individuals can be aesthetically free and diverse despite the social values engulfing them. The Cons did later allude to this reasoning by questioning whether Wall Street is likelier to hire a tall white man or a short person of color. The Pros did try answering the question with examples of technology creating diversity or humans embracing imperfections. Despite this real albeit indirect engagement with the underlying question, since the debaters presented these rebuttals as anecdotal quips, their opponents simply plastered over them with their own anecdotes. Their arguments thus flew over each other rather than moving towards an answer because the conversation did not dive into humanities-style inquiry: whether Philosophy’s dissection of underlying axioms, History’s extrapolation of conflicting stories, or English’s investigation of living psyches. One could even stretch to say that this overemphasis of anecdotes and data in the Forum reflects the negation-based empiricism of STEM thinking. While rigorous when pursued faithfully, this focus on merely reviewing and cross-verifying clinical trials risks stymying the creativity to extrapolate towards the greater implications of technological change for society and the human condition. It was no accident that the speakers frequently referenced literature. Brave New World and its shelves of peers are not only pop culture references to appeal to the crowd, albeit sadly unsuccessful with us, but also explorations of how human nature might use and abuse technology. Referencing them makes drawing upon the thinking of the humanities easier compared to steadily directing and pushing the conversation. That even at this highest level of intellectual expertise, a debate falls short simply reflects the importance of a strong foundation and continual practice of the humanities. Undeniably, the sciences pave the path towards the junctures of progress. However, if we do not wish to merely be swept by the material current of technology and its invisible hand, but to discern what we ought to become, then we require the humanities’ investigation of lemmas and motivations, axioms and aspirations.

Dear Scroll C Board, Publishing a 12-page or 16-page issue in a month is no joke. We, the CI Board, are only beginning to figure this out. It requires a special form of dedication— a passion and commitment so unwavering that transcend the impossibilities constructed by the burdensome boarding school setting. There are simply so many components that must go into an issue, from articles to interviews, from graphics to photos, and the margin of error is so small that these components must fit in perfectly. Yet you have proven to everyone time after time not only that it could be done, but it could be done in a tasteful fashion of professionalism and integrity. Working as a Scroll editor, one barely receives the appropriate recognition. Readers hardly see the arduous and tiresome process that goes into each issue. And I don’t blame them, for receiving monthly issues becomes routine; it is part of the editor’s job to make consistent student journalism a natural and intrinsic part of Deerfield life. When readers do find something interesting, the natural point of contact becomes the author, not you who edited the article. It is a silent position, but one that bears all the responsibilities. So I want to commend you for doing an exemplary job if you have not been told so often. On behalf of the new board, I would like to offer another heartfelt thank you. Thank you, for teaching us that a bit of determination and a spark of passion can go a long way. Thank you, for having faith in us even when we have lost some ourselves. And thank you, for growing us into the writers and editors we are today. I also want to acknowledge John Liu in particular, my mentor and good friend. Last year, I had wondered how you stayed unaffected in contrast to the difficulties of your job. I even doubted that the Scroll was of any challenge for you. I realized I was wrong, very quickly, when I took over in March. There are so many parts of this job that weigh invisibly; seemingly insurmountable challenges block the path. You just carried the weight quietly. Sometimes, this involves traversing the labyrinth of Scroll bureaucracy to find that one missing graphic. Other times, it is navigating difficult conversations with the Academic Affairs Office about an article published accidentally. It might also be an ambitious collaboration with another school newspaper that ended in a logistics nightmare. In all these scenarios, you handled the pressure by yourself and never told anyone else. Failure was likewise not an option. You were the captain of the ship, charting a wild course in the icy sea. So many icebergs that could have struck the ship, yet you have masterfully steered clear of every obstacle and brought it to harbour, intact and better than ever. The crew, the C Board, has served well alike. Each member bears their own burden and offers all they can, so each issue looks effortlessly excellent. Underneath every issue, however, are countless personal sacrifices that had to be made during the stressful senior year. Similarly, failure was never an option. Now the ship has set sail again, and this time without you. The journey ahead will surely be difficult, challenging, but rewarding. Though you will not be on the ship, your spirit very much will. You have inspired us to take the same spirit of resilience, responsibility, and passion to approach journalism. With the rudder now in our hands, we will try our best to sustain and grow this legacy, now passed over a hundred different hands. Thank you again, and you will be missed very much in the Scroll room. Yours in truth, Andrew Li

All of us are familiar with Ms. Brown’s Wednesday phone-free campaign, backed by Phone Down by Lost Kings. Although some may find it amusing, the campaign comes from good intentions. Most students, including many Scroll board members, have tried some version of escaping their phones already—screen time limits, notification blockers, “Do Not Disturb”, deleting social media then redownloading it a few weeks later. As stated in a Pew research, average time on social platforms has dropped around 10% from its 2022 peak, with the steepest decline among 16 to 24 year olds. The desire to escape phones itself has created an industry. Digital wellbeing apps, subscription-based blockers, dumbphones sold at quite a premium, and wellness retreats built around “disconnection” are all trying to turn restraint into a revenue stream. According to research published by The Conversation, the digital detox market is currently valued at 62 billion dollars and projected to reach over 200 billion dollars by 2033. A 2026 study in the European Journal of Marketing describes this process as a co-optation—digital technology repositions itself now as a protector of our attention rather than its destroyer, and the economy that created the exhaustion sells you the retreat as well. That contradiction seems to be uniquely modern, but it is not. There is this man, Edward Bernays, whose work influences modern consumer culture. Before Bernays, you bought a car simply because you needed transportation, and you bought soap to be clean. His philosophies changed advertising permanently. He connected products to personal identities and emotions, and now the product itself matters less than its message. His most famous campaign rebranded cigarettes as “torches of freedom,” breaking taboo around women smoking and linking smoking to female liberation. He staged a publicity stunt at the 1929 Easter Sunday Parade, arranging for fashionable young women to light cigarettes in front of the press, transforming cigarettes into a political symbol. This became a hinge moment in the history of consumerism. Before Bernays, you consumed to live. After Bernays, you consumed to be. Sociologist David Riesman, in his 1950 study The Lonely Crowd, described this broader shift as a move from an “inner-directed” society to an “other-directed” one. In an inner-directed culture, identity comes from personal values, discipline, faith, and community. In an other-directed culture, identity is shaped increasingly by social approval and perception. Once people began consuming to express who they were, even resistance can become something that could be packaged and sold. In the 1960s, a counterculture rejected consumerism entirely, yet within a decade, businesses sold the hippie aesthetic back through fashion, music, and lifestyle products. Minimalism followed; the desire to own less was turned into an aesthetic and monetized. Then mindfulness—a contemplative practice centuries old—was absorbed into what the Global Wellness Institute now estimates as a 4.5 trillion dollar wellness industry. What you have to know is that Bernays wasn’t only selling products; he was a propaganda specialist. He wrote that “the conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society,” and someone will always shape what the public thinks and feels—that it might as well be done deliberately. His insight was that you could sell a version of reality, and if the version was compelling enough emotionally, most people would stick with it. That idea did not die with him, which brings us to today, when that idea arguably takes its full form in social media. The platforms automated and perfected Bernay’s logic. Algorithms sell you attention, rage, identity, belonging, and some enemies. The content itself hollowed out as well. AI-written articles now outnumber those written by humans. According to peer-reviewed journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, consumers no longer trust online content, and their preference for AI-generated material has dropped. When you scroll, you come across content produced by no one in particular and for no one in particular—just optimized for your engagement. So the people leave, or they try to. They download the blocker and book the retreat. Which brings us back to that $62 billion industry, and to the pattern underneath it, that every genuine human need eventually finds a price tag. When that need emerges as a resistance—someone notices it and recognizes its market value, packages it, and sells the identity of opting out back to the people who originally opt out. The aesthetic changes, whether you look back at the hippie, the minimalist, or the mindfulness movements. The commercial “detox” industry now thrives because personal solutions are easy to sell, whereas systematic change is hard. Once you see the mechanism, it is difficult to unsee it. And frankly, it's everywhere, not just on screens.

HEIDI LIANG/DEERFIELD SCROLL Palantir Technologies Chief Executive Officer Alex Karp’s opinions on immigration have long aligned with Republican policies. Under Karp’s direction, during the first Trump administration, Palantir provided data analysis software to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Karp has clearly and publicly expressed his anti immigration beliefs; on The Axios Show, he said that “[t]he idea that somehow it's a God-given right of people of widely divergent cultures to come to our culture" goes against "actual, empirical experience, and none of your voters want it." However, with the second Trump administration, Karp has taken his support of anti-immigration policy a step further. In April of 2025, Palantir Technologies struck a 30-million-dollar deal with ICE to develop “Immigration OS,” an artificial intelligence-based surveillance program to track, identify, and deport illegal immigrants. This deal displays a worrying shift in the fundamental values of Palantir. While it might come as a surprise, Karp’s opinions situate him on the left side of the political spectrum. In 2024, Karp self-identified as a socialist and a progressive. He voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and backed Kamala Harris in her 2024 presidential campaign. Karp has long been an advocate for minority groups in America, and he has publicly spoken about the issue of economic inequality. However, his contributions to Immigration OS run contrary to this past stance, as it allows for the tracking and large-scale collection of data on immigrants, a particular minority group. Aside from this shift in priorities, three aspects of Immigration OS stand out as particularly worrying. First, it significantly shifts the delicate balance of power between the executive branch and state governments in the area of data collection. Currently, federal governments rely on state governments to voluntarily give them data; the United States is simply too large and too diverse for the federal government to collect all the data it wants itself. However, state governments are not required to provide information to the federal government; they have the ability to decide if and to what extent they cooperate. However, Immigration OS completely bypasses this need for cooperation; the software draws from local, state, and federal databases. Second, the interoperability of data—that is, the ability of different programs, computers, and software to seamlessly communicate and exchange data—makes the congregation of data in the hands of the federal government more dangerous. Although Immigration OS only collects and analyzes for the purpose of deporting illegal immigrants, it nonetheless profiles individuals and provides the federal government with the resources necessary for it to successfully mass surveil and target specific minority groups should it choose to do so. 404 Media reported in April of 2025 that a version of Palantir’s case management system for ICE enabled agents to search for people based on hundreds of very specific, personal traits. Some of these traits—such as the individual's nation of birth and their present legal standing—were immigration enforcement-related. Other traits—such as someone’s hair color and license-plate reader data, which allows for identification of the locations that a person travels to—were not. This mass collection of data, especially highly personal data that isn’t particularly pertinent to immigration enforcement, increases the potential for large-scale abuse, as any malicious figures in the federal government will find it far easier to profile and to target. Third, Immigration OS puts the United States at risk of becoming dependent on artificial intelligence. Take Flock Safety, a public safety technology company that produces AI-powered license plate readers and cameras for law enforcement agencies, as an example. In 2021, the city of Troy, New York, partnered with Flock. After their original two-year contract expired, the city decided not to renew its license. However, the mayor of Troy was forced to declare an emergency state to keep Flock cameras on because during those two years, Troy had become so reliant on Flock that if the system shut down, the city would be unable to function properly. Chinmayi Sharma, a Fordham Law School professor specializing in AI and cybersecurity, put it plainly: “[O]nce a jurisdiction becomes so dependent on a technology that they have a contract with, that they use, that they rely on, they've gotten very used to, they might have laid off the human workforce and reallocated resources, you become very dependent on it.” This reliance could be especially damaging because, currently, Immigration OS has no way of distinguishing the credibility of a source; it simply compiles information. But to me, what’s even more worrying than the nature of this invasive data collection itself is the way that Palantir is trying to market itself. Two weeks ago, Palantir debuted its own line of merch. There is certainly irony in the fact that the first item of clothing Palantir launched was a 239 dollar chore coat—a type of clothing that has its origins with 19th-century French blue-collar workers, where it was called the bleu de travail. Despite all the work it’s doing to put power in the hands of the people at the top, Palantir is trying to identify with the common people. What’s even more worrying than Palantir’s attempt to market itself is its apparent success in doing so. Both versions of their chore coat—bright blue and black—are sold out in all sizes on their online store. In an interview with the New York Times, Palantir Head of Strategic Engagement Eliano Younes claimed that, “It’s not political. It’s about people who love Palantir and are aligned with our mission,” and their incredible sales show that generally, people believe him. In claiming that they are “not political,” Palantir is crafting a cult of personality around itself—an ideal image separated from its role in the brutal deportations of the Trump administration and the increased risk for the rise of authoritarianism that their technology is allowing for. Palantir is offering people the opportunity to identify with, support, and represent their brand, and people are gladly taking that offer. To be honest, I’m not certain what the purpose of this op-ed is. I’m not sure if there’s anything that we can do. I just hope that we haven’t become so enamored with branding and narrative that we’ve lost the ability to see surveillance for what it is.

HEIDI LIANG/DEERFIELD SCROLL It’s no secret that Deerfield is a place built on tradition; whether it's slapping the tiled green “D” on the way to practice or attending sit-down meals seven times a week. Another one of Deerfield’s traditions includes its dress code, which is described on the Deerfield website as a “shared experience and an everyday practice that signals seriousness of purpose and mutual respect within our community.” The Deerfield dress code plays an integral role in shaping our identity as a student body, to the extent that it encourages students to conform to it in order to achieve a sense of belonging. There exists as well a basic level of inequality when it comes to following the dress code, which could result in exclusivity. It's no secret that my and perhaps many other freshman girls’ wardrobes changed drastically from the beginning of the year, simply through experience and exposure. My closet in particular came from very humble beginnings; it went from a few shirts and tops to a plethora of skirts and blouses, with some pieces of clothing finding a place under my bed due to limited capacity. During the Disco Dance last year, every freshman was scrambling to get the same exact sparkly sequin skirt. It's almost instinctive to see another girl with a pretty dress and to ask, “Where is that from?” which only accentuates the “copy and paste” culture we’re experiencing at Deerfield. It makes me stop and wonder, where does this phenomenon come from? Deerfield girls, in particular, have made this intangible but real dress code I like to call “The Imagined Deerfield Girl Dress Code.” Right now, the Deerfield Dress Code website is quite cryptic regarding what girls are allowed to wear, stating that all students should wear, "a blazer or sportcoat (with lapel), an appropriate top like collared shirts, blouses, dresses, and an appropriate bottom layer like pants, shorts, skirts, and dresses.” The “imagined” part kicks in when you walk down the brick paths every morning and see girls rocking blazer-less sundresses, cardigans of all sorts of colors, and most frighteningly, the occasional pair of blue jeans when nobody seems to be looking. Even though this dress code is not too far off from the original, there’s clearly an implied way that Deerfield girls should dress that’s not stated on paper. What makes the phenomenon peculiar is how it’s internalized by students who start to enforce the dress code themselves, rather than a single person or institution. To further understand where this dress code comes from, it’s helpful to catch a glimpse at what an imagined order truly is. Coined by Sapiens author Yuval Harari, an imagined order is an intersubjective belief that has historically increased mass-collaboration amongst societies, and can also shift into becoming an “imagined reality.” Some of the most famous examples include everyday things like the value of the dollar bill, laws, or, for a more niche example, our dress code. What makes these imagined orders so attractive is that they create cohesion, which provides security. I can’t lie, wearing those billowy sundresses and comfortable cardigans makes me feel a part of something. That desire to belong is precisely what gives imagined orders their power. I could have just failed my math test or suffered an embarrassing slip and fall, but it would feel like an undeniable fact that I belong to the Deerfield community. Although nearly everyone experiences psychological pressures to conform, not everyone has the ability to participate in the trends that define our belonging. When appearance starts tying to social acceptance, fashion stops being a simple form of self-expression. Hence, the social unity and community bond created by consumer culture reveals its inequalities. Highly regarded sociologist Zygmunt Bauman described two main consumer groups that he referred to as the “seduced,” the ones with the resources to follow trends, and the “repressers,” the ones unable to buy in due to financial restrictions. These designations sought to highlight the basic level of inequality that consumerism poses. Most importantly, this directly represents how “consumer choice” is only truly available to those who have the necessary financial resources to afford the latest trends. Especially because how we look dictates our belonging, “consumer choice” can turn into a “consumer necessity” for fitting in, and the “repressers” become outliers. The “Imagined Deerfield Girl Dress Code” is a tough code to follow for students with less financial resources, which leads to a greater sense of alienation. To end off this Op-Ed, I challenge you, the reader, to do two things: one, look at the contents of your closet, and two, ask yourself, why? Gauge how your closet has changed over time, and most importantly, why you made the fashion choices you did. Then ask yourself, were those choices really yours, or the result of the influences from the people around you? In a consumerist society, do we really have consumer choice? Or rather, have we been getting complacent with the illusion of a choice, dictated by the ones around us?

HEIDI LIANG/DEERFIELD SCROLL This time last year, in April of 2025, I was on my phone when I received two Instagram notifications: a follow request from user @kwasi4prez2025 and another from @pzhangforprez. A couple of weeks later, another account—@elloraforpres—popped up on my feed. I remember scrolling through their posts, watching Ms. Heidi Valk’s biology class yell “We endorse Ellora for President” and Prof John Taylor say "You're the best Patrick!”, enthusiastically pumping a fist into the air. With both the 2026-2027 Deerfield Student Body President Elections and the US Midterm Elections coming up, I’ve been reflecting a lot on how campaigning has changed in recent years. As candidates, what does it take to win someone's vote? As voters, what does it mean to give someone our vote? Unfortunately, I believe that the answer to these questions has become increasingly based on shallow impressions rather than comprehensive understanding. Before I continue, I would like to recognize that there is value in the digestibility of information, especially in an institution of any kind that seeks to promote civil discourse and the interaction and exchange of diverse ideas. I think that American academic and author Walter Russell Mead best describes the need for it when he writes in his book Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World, “Democratic society depends on myths; without such a convenient historical shorthand that compresses and simplifies extremely complex historical events and political questions into ideas and images that nonspecialists can understand and use, democratic debate would simply disappear” (Mead, 2001, p. 61). However, there also needs to be a balance between digestibility and accuracy. Yes, if the communication of an idea is too accurate and complex, few people will understand it enough to make sense of it and formulate their own opinions about it; this prevents its propagation and widespread discussion. But, there is danger in making an idea too digestible; if it is too simplified to be even somewhat of a representation of its original meaning, the opinions people form about it aren’t applicable. When candidates reduce a complex argument, idea, or policy to a catchy slogan, they lose its original meaning; in this regard, I believe that campaigning has swung too far towards digestibility. Recently, I read a New York Times Guest Essay titled “The Old Way of Campaigning Won’t Cut It Anymore.” In it, author and veteran Democratic political strategist David Plouffe argues that “[a] successful campaign in 2026 must operate like a full-time production studio.” He claims that in order to run a successful campaign, a candidate must cover all of their bases; they must “harmonize” their message across Facebook accounts, Tiktok reels, Twitch livestreams, in-person events, and everything in between—that is, they must convey the same cohesive and simple message to as many people as possible. In terms of campaign strategy, I agree with him. In a period in which new voters are increasingly disinterested in politics— a 2025 Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll revealed that only 20% of adults under age 30 follow politics very closely—outreach through short, memorable clips and slogans seems crucial for garnering widespread support. Candidates in Deerfield elections use the same strategy. Current Student Body President Patrick Zhang ’26 described, “I just went into [my campaign] with a mindset of trying to emulate stuff that I’ve seen online, like creating funny videos and eye-catching videos that make you feel good…I think I focused a lot more on the social media aspect than anybody else. I think the videos were a big reason that I won.” This approach worked for Zhang and for 2024-2025 Student Body President Billy Tang ’25, who both had Instagram accounts with significantly more followers than anyone else in their respective election cycles. However, I believe that with this model of campaigning, we lose a crucial level of deeper understanding that is necessary for us—as voters—to make informed decisions that truly align with what we want. Scrolling through Deerfield Student Body President candidates’ Instagram accounts, I noticed that they included starkly little to no information about what changes candidates were seeking to carry out in office. None of them spoke to the ways in which a certain candidate was unique in their vision for Deerfield. Reflecting on my personal experience with last year’s election, I was surprised to realize that I couldn’t recall what any of the candidates’ speeches were about. I struggled to come up with any memory of what promises they campaigned on. Even now, I honestly cannot come up with a single campaign-based reason why I voted for the person I voted for. Beyond Deerfield, while I don’t believe that US voters are randomly throwing their votes around, the shift towards slogan-based, overly outreach-focused campaigning makes it more difficult for them to identify the true implications of the policies candidates advocate for. In that sense, we increasingly cast votes based on the digital aesthetic appeal of candidates rather than their ability to propose realistic and effective policies that align with our personal values. In the same article in which he advocates for studio-production-like campaigning, Plouffe himself admits that this new system isn’t a good predictor of candidates' performances in office. He writes, “Is this a great way to audition and select our leaders, especially for executive offices? Not particularly. The abilities to communicate and rally and comfort the public in a crisis are essential ingredients in a strong leader. Those skills, at least, a voter can gauge through video. What’s harder to judge are the routine aspects of those jobs — how you hire and fire, make decisions and operate day to day.” When we start making choices based on impressions instead of thorough and well-researched comprehension, we’re bound to be disappointed with the results. Voter dissatisfaction rates reflect this: a March 2026 survey found that the majority of both Democrats and Republicans—69% of all adults—are unhappy with the way democracy is functioning in the United States. In conversation, I hear complaints about how the Deerfield student council doesn't seem to do anything more than I hear about what it does. So what can we do about all of this? How can we, high school students, try to change a country-wide, decades-long shift in campaigning strategy? Fundamentally, I believe that change needs to start from the bottom up; as voters, we need to start being more curious about the issues that matter to us and pushing candidates to get into specifics. Candidates can only campaign on false promises or vague ideas if voters don’t ask hard questions. We need to educate ourselves enough to know what questions to ask, then care enough to ask them. The meaning of campaigns is not in single-dimensional, single-sentence slogans that simply sound good; anyone can come up with those. The meaning is in the complexity, in how people respond to difficult situations and in their framework for achieving universal goals. If we push for nuanced campaigning that addresses the intricacies that exist in any position, the narrative around the most effective way to garner support must follow. We can’t change the nature of US politics, and this problem doesn’t have a quick fix. But at least in our small preparatory high school in Western Massachusetts, we can begin to shift the culture. Three days ago, @blytheforpresident requested to follow me on Instagram. Two days ago, I received follow requests from @votenateugwonali, @dimakforda, and @tedfreedmanforprez. I’ve begun to see campaign posters pop up in the Dining Hall and in academic buildings. Once again, it’s time for us as the student body to decide who we want to represent us this coming year. Before you cast your vote, I would encourage you to try to understand the candidates. Don’t just listen to their speeches. Don’t just watch their Instagram campaign reels. Don’t just go off of impressions. Reach out with questions, talk to them in person, or engage actively in another manner, because with our right to vote comes the responsibility to vote informed.

KAYLEEN CHO/DEERFIELD SCROLL At the end of every year, students at Deerfield Academy scroll through the course catalog with calculations running through their minds. For many, the central question is rarely “What would I like to learn next year?” but more like “Which course will serve me the best?” With this mindset, Latin and Ancient Greek are usually the first casualties. They are almost always disqualified because they are dead languages, as if this designation disqualifies them from being relevant. The term “dead languages” is, in essence, a misnomer. Dead languages are defined as those without any remaining native speakers. Latin and Ancient Greek do fit that criterion, but that in no way implies that the languages are now irrelevant. The Latin language retains an active presence in English vocabulary, especially in academia and law. Perhaps even more importantly, Latin serves as the root language of an entire family of spoken languages, like French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian. This means that by studying Latin, a student has, in many ways, learned the basic building blocks of five living languages. The practical argument for studying Latin, while underappreciated, is not baseless. But Ancient Greek offers a completely different, and in some ways, more convincing rationale for study. Whereas Latin has obvious practical uses, Greek has none. There is no family of related languages, nor does it significantly improve a person’s writing skills in English. If a student chooses to study Ancient Greek, there is little doubt that it is because they find the subject interesting. And I would argue that this quality, far from being a weakness, is actually one of Ancient Greek’s most crucial aspects. We live in an age where the very concept of intrinsic motivation has been severely eroded. We have developed a tendency to demand explanation and justification for almost everything we do, asking questions like “What is this for?”, “What does this produce?”, and “Where does this lead?” These are important questions, but they become problematic when they are the only questions asked. The gradual loss of intrinsic motivation, the ability to recognize and appreciate things for themselves, is a significant intellectual loss, one that is reflected in the manner in which subjects like the Classics are approached. This begs the question: What exactly does the study of the Classics contribute? Ancient Greece gave rise to Western philosophy, political theory, dramatic theater, and medicine. Philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates grappled with questions of fundamental importance to human existence, posing questions like “What is justice?” and “How should a person live?” These are not abstract relics of an ancient curriculum. They are the same questions that Deerfield students encounter in History, in English, and in the ethical dimensions of nearly every discipline taught here. To engage with the Classics is not to step outside of a Deerfield education; it is to access its deepest roots. Furthermore, there is simply no substitute for reading a work of literature in its original language. Every translation is an interpretation, in which the translator makes judgments about tone, emphasis, and ambiguity that color a reader’s experience in ways that may not align with the author’s intent. Studying the Iliad in Greek or Cicero’s work in Latin can be a linguistic exercise in a textbook, but it can be a journey of unparalleled intimacy with the great minds of the Western world. I recognize that students’ time is limited and focusing on subjects like the Classics takes away from skills that are demonstrably useful in today’s world, such as coding, economics, or modern languages. This objection is valid, but it is also not the point of this piece. There is no need to mandate the study of Latin and Ancient Greek. Intellectual diversity is very valuable, and compulsory study is not helpful. But it is important to recognize the error of dismissing these subjects on the grounds of practicality, the assumption being that since they do not have any readily apparent value, they are not worth a student’s time. That attitude reflects a fundamentally narrow perspective on education. A good secondary education is not just meant to train future workers but to create individuals with the ability to think independently, tackle difficult ideas, and maintain genuine intellectual curiosity. For centuries, the study of the Classics has served this purpose. To discard these subjects on the basis of practicality is to misunderstand what the Classics offer and the purpose of education itself. Structural changes can help. Deerfield has already taken meaningful steps, allowing Ancient Greek to fulfill the language requirement and offering Latin up to Six Honors, and expanding access further would be a welcome development. But the more important shift is cultural. Faculty can play a role by openly affirming the value of humanistic inquiry alongside technical preparation, and advisors can encourage students to not only ask “Will this help my application?” but also “Does this genuinely interest me?” As a student body, we should resist the habit of measuring every intellectual pursuit by its immediate usefulness. Latin is not a dead language in any meaningful sense, and Ancient Greek, whatever its limitations as a practical credential, remains one of the most direct pathways into the intellectual heritage of Western civilization. Both deserve a place not merely in the course catalog, but in the genuine intellectual life of this school.

HEIDI LIANG/DEERFIELD SCROLL At the end of each term, students receive grades that are meant to reflect their academic performance, yet these evaluations often lack the explanation necessary to interpret them. Since comments are only provided at the midterm, the end-of-term grades can often seem unjustified. Paired with the intentionally obscure grading systems that prevent students from seeing their class averages before grades are released, term-end grades can often seem like a random ruling rather than a proper assessment. A lack of clarity leads students to see grades as inaccurate rather than understanding the rationale behind them. These unexplained discrepancies between midterm and final grades fundamentally undermine a purposeful Deerfield education. Instead of prioritizing the learning process, students are forced to reduce their performance to an arbitrary number, rather than being explicitly told the reason behind changing grades at a crucial checkpoint. This leads to mistrust and misunderstandings, widening the gap between teacher assessment and student performance. This issue becomes especially evident when grades or effort marks fluctuate between the midterm and the end of the term. The significance of a grade or effort mark fluctuation is not limited to declines; it’s arguably even more important for a student to understand why or how their grade or effort has improved so that students can be made aware of the conscious changes they can make to replicate improvements in the future. Without that explanation, students are left without a clear sense of what behaviors or strategies led to their progress. In the past two iterations of grade releases, I’ve noticed that my grade in some classes has improved without an explanation since the midterm, and after the initial wave of grace and relief, I’m also met with a sense of uncertainty. What did I improve on after the midterm? Was I more attentive during class discussions, warranting a higher participation grade? Did I do better in graded class discussions? While these behaviors may seem minor, they could warrant a higher effort grade in the eyes of the teacher. However, without explicit feedback detailing the reasons behind improvement, the student never learns what works and what doesn’t. This leads to the broader issue of grading transparency within Deerfield’s curriculum. Many of Deerfield’s courses intentionally obscure course grades from students, especially in the humanities. Dean of Academic Affairs Dr. Anne Bruder states that this approach “makes students more invested in the risk-taking process that is becoming a better writer,” and helps avoid a “transactional or strategic tendency” in learning. She also notes that “every teacher has a grade book and every teacher should be able to have a conversation with any student about where they stand,” suggesting that conversations can help resolve confusion. However, being able to have a conversation with a teacher does not substitute for providing context at the moment grades are released. While it is important for students to have conversations during the term, it is equally important to provide explanations for grade changes when or before students see them. When grades are released during breaks, confusion cannot be immediately addressed, and by the time conversations occur later, that confusion may have already undermined the trust between teacher and student. The other issue with substituting comments with teacher-student conversations is the staggered nature through which students would be receiving their feedback. Aside from the obvious logistical issues with students each having separate conversations with teachers after any instance of confusion, speaking with teachers after term-end grades contradicts the very reasoning behind a pivotal policy change years ago that moved the release of comments from the term-end to midterms. Regarding midterm grades and comments, Dr. Bruder stated, “We disaggregated them to make students actually attend to the growth-oriented feedback before they think about the grade.” By this logic, students should be given constructive, growth-oriented feedback before numerical grades are released during breaks after the term to ensure that they attend to academic growth before considering numbers. Structured midterm and term-end comments can provide explicit constructive feedback at both junctions, helping students understand reasons for upward or downward trends, allowing students to maintain a healthy relationship with their grades, seeing them as valuable metrics for assessment rather than punitive and arbitrary numbers. At the same time, requiring full comments for every student may not be realistic, as it would significantly increase teachers’ workload and potentially reduce the quality of their feedback. A more practical solution would be to require comments only when there are notable changes—such as shifts in participation grades or numerical changes of two and more points. In these cases, brief explanations attributing the change to performances on certain assignments or assessments would provide much more clarity while making the workload manageable for teachers. This approach would also create a stronger foundation for the student-teacher conversations that the school encourages, making those discussions more productive and focused. Dr. Bruder said, “One of the most important things to learn at Deerfield is that you're driving the bus of your learning.” While student ownership is important, there should be an additional step in between the release of grades and those conversations. Providing students with clearer feedback at the moment would help ensure that grades support, rather than obscure, the learning process.