The Exeter Bulletin SPRING 2022
HOW AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL FIND COULD LINK ST U D E N T S TO E X E T E R ’S R E VO LU T I O N A RY PA ST
Jackie Kim ’14 chose to direct her gift to Equity and Inclusion.
I’m so grateful to the Exeter teachers, students and staff for truly creating a ‘home away from home’ for the international student community.
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SPRING
The Exeter Bulletin Principal William K. Rawson ’71; P’08
Trustees President Morgan C.W. Sze ’83 Vice President Deidre G. O’Byrne ’84 Wole C. Coaxum ’88, Suzi Kwon Cohen ’88, Mark A. Edwards ’78, Elizabeth A. “Betsy” Fleming ’86, Claudine Gay ’88, Peter A. Georgescu ’57, Scott S.W. Hahn ’90, Jacqueline Hayes ’85, Ira D. Helfand, M.D. ’67, Jennifer P. Holleran ’86, Cia Buckley Marakovits ’83, Sally J. Michaels ’82, William K. Rawson ’71, Genisha Saverimuthu ’02, Peter M. Scocimara ’82, Sanjay K. Shetty, M.D. ’92, Serena Wille Sides ’89, Kristyn A. (McLeod) Van Ostern ’96, Janney Wilson ’83 The Exeter Bulletin (ISSN No. 0195-0207) is published four times each year: fall, winter, spring and summer, by Phillips Exeter Academy 20 Main Street, Exeter NH 03833-2460 Telephone 603-772-4311 Periodicals postage paid at Exeter, NH, and at additional mailing offices. Printed in the USA by Cummings Printing. The Exeter Bulletin is sent free of charge to alumni, parents, grandparents, friends and educational institutions by Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter, NH. Communications may be addressed to the editor; email bulletin@exeter.edu. Copyright 2022 by the Trustees of Phillips Exeter Academy. ISSN-0195-0207 Postmasters: Send address changes to: Phillips Exeter Academy Records Office 20 Main Street Exeter, NH 03833-2460
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Director of Communications Robin Giampa Executive Editor Jennifer Wagner Contributing Editor Patrick Garrity Class Notes Editor Cathy Webber Staff Writer Sarah Pruitt ’95 Editorial Coordinator Maxine Weed Creative Director/Design David Nelson, Nelson Design Contributing Designers Rachel Dlugos Jacqueline Trimmer Photography Editor Christian Harrison Communications Advisory Committee Daniel G. Brown ’82, Robert C. Burtman ’74, Dorinda Elliott ’76, Alison Freeland ’72, Keith Johnson ’52, Yvonne M. Lopez ’93
“ARCHAEOLOGY OFFERS HISTORICAL TEACHING A CERTAIN VITALITY.” —page 44
IN THIS ISSUE
Volume CXXVI, Issue no. 3
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Features 32 All Things Being Equal Cameron Frary ’20 and John Palfrey ’90 discuss equity in education. Plus: An update on institutional efforts.
38 Global Citizen What one alum learned about herself and the world during a bridge year overseas. By Renee Bertrand ’21
44 History on the Edge of the Woods How an archaeological find could link students to Exeter’s Revolutionary past. 38
By Patrick Garrity
Departments 6
Around the Table: Heard in Assembly, inside The Learning Center, student achievements
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Inside the Writing Life: Pamela Erens ’81
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Sports: Boatman Bob Burnham, winter E/A and coach Dana Barbin tallies 1,000 games
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Connections: Alexanderia Baker Haidara ’99, Miles Hoover ’15, Gregory Anderson ’85 and Grant Moran ’74
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Class Notes
102 Memorial Minute: Elizabeth “Betsey” Moulton Farnham ’46 (Hon.); P’92, P’92 104 Finis Origine Pendet: Kaylee Chen ’23 COVER PHOTOGRAPH BY CHRISTIAN HARRISON
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The pink petals of flowering crab apple trees color the landscape outside of Abbot Hall and the Academy Building. PHOTOGRAPH BY CHRISTIAN HARRISON
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AROUND THE TABLE
What’s new and notable at the Academy
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Letters to the Editor “Having recently lost my wife to cancer, I was especially moved by the article ‘Finding Meaning in Grief,’ about Meghan Riordan Jarvis and the much-needed work in this field of therapy. Thank you.” — R. Jono Cobb ’75 “It seems to me that this decision [to adopt need-blind admissions] moves the Academy firmly in the direction that the founders had in mind. I don’t think there is any better way to announce that the best secondary education in America is not just for the privileged than what Exeter has done.” — Brett Donham ’56
CORRECTIONS
We regret to report that in a picture of new faculty members that ran in the winter issue of The Exeter Bulletin, English Instructor Sahar Ullah was mistakenly identified as Science Instructor Shimaa Ghazal. While we regret all errors, we acknowledge and apologize for the particularly harmful impact of the misidentification of two Muslim women of color. The harmful impact is made worse by context — a piece intended to introduce new faculty and celebrate their diversity of backgrounds, talents and identities. We are truly sorry for the error. We have apologized to Drs. Ullah and Ghazal and have amended our processes to prevent such errors in the future. An apology also goes to Sally Morris, who is an instructor in classical languages, not science, as was listed in the same issue.
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Student Teachers By Principal Bill Rawson ’71; P’08
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’m often asked if, with my busy schedule, I am able to spend time with students and learn about their experiences at Exeter. The answer is an emphatic yes. The time I spend with our students gives me energy and joy, and importantly informs how I think about the rest of my work. There often is no more important part of my day. I am a regular at athletic contests, music, theater and dance performances, and art exhibitions throughout the year. I always come away amazed by the talents of our students, and proud of how they show up and support each other. As much as I like to attend games and performances, I also enjoy attending practices and rehearsals, because that gives me more opportunities to engage with students, coaches and teachers. At a recent dance rehearsal, the student choreographer took great pride in explaining her work to me before she supervised the rehearsal — I learned a lot! From my seat in the Goel Center, I realized how the addition of that building has completely transformed student experiences in theater and dance, just as the additions of The Bowld and new field house have done the same for music and athletics. I often meet with students to hear about issues that concern them and to get their input on initiatives we are working on as an administration. In conversations with the student-led Environmental Action Committee, students shared their ideas about how we might build greater environmental awareness on campus, bring more speakers on environmental topics to assembly, expand curricular offerings, and create new internship opportunities — ideas that will be reflected in our climate action plan that is under development. A recent meeting with leaders of our Muslim Student Association led to a decision to make Eid al-Fitr (the breaking of the fast after Ramadan) a no-class day, on par with how we support other major religious holidays — an important decision for our community, and something we are able to do without reducing the number of classes. Other administrative leaders have joined me in numerous meetings with student leaders this year to discuss our protocols for handling reports of sexual misconduct and supporting students. I also host events at Saltonstall House or elsewhere on campus to celebrate students’ accomplishments and get to know them better. I host or attend cast parties, captains’ brunches, and meetings with affinity groups and student clubs. These gatherings often lead to wide-ranging discussions on issues important to the students. I hear what gives them joy, see the strength of their friendships and listen to their concerns. Even in unplanned, casual moments, I learn a lot. I recently had lunch with a student who shared his experience as a leader of a Core Values Project initiative focused on equity and inclusion in athletics. Our conversation reminded me that while it is hard to make time in our schedule for new initiatives, it’s important to do so if they are to remain priorities. These are just a few examples of ways that I interact with students in order to understand how they experience their time at Exeter. I consistently see their joy in being here and how much they care about each other and their school. As we welcome reunion classes back to campus this spring for the first time in three years, I am excited that many of you will be able to see firsthand all that is happening here, and witness how our students are thriving, in and outside the classroom. Every day I’m reminded of how lucky we all are to be part of such a vibrant community that is so deeply committed to preparing youth from every quarter to lead purposeful lives. E
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Heard in Assembly S O U N D B I T E S F RO M T H I S W I N T E R’S S P E A K E R S E R I E S Compiled by Maxine Weed
Willie O’Ree, Hockey Hall of Famer “Don’t let anybody tell you you can’t attain your goal if you feel strongly within your heart, within your mind. When the doctor told me I was going to be blind and I would never play hockey again, I just couldn’t accept that because he didn’t know how I felt inside, he didn’t know about the goals and the dreams I had. I just said, ‘I’m just going to prove him wrong.’ And I went out and was able to play pro hockey for 21 years with one eye.”
Dr. Sarah Milkovich ’96, lead science systems engineer, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory “If you think about the difficulties that we’ve all had in the past couple of years, wearing masks and staying indoors ... think about [life on] Mars. If you’re ever not in a room, you’re going to be wearing a spacesuit. You will never feel the breeze on your face. I think it’s only going to be a very rare, small group of people who are going to want to live like that. I think that’s one of the things that people don’t take into account when they get really excited about long-term human presence on Mars.”
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Devi Lockwood ’10, author “One overarching message I would leave you with is this: Storytelling can be an intervention into climate silence and an invitation to use this really ancient human technology of connecting through language and narrative in a way that can counteract inaction.”
Chester E. Finn Jr. ’62, writer, president emeritus of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute “This is a question of curriculum, whether every young American should learn some things in common and be able to participate in a shared history and a shared culture — even as we understand that our history and our culture contain multiple strands and elements that deserve respect and understanding, and even as we also recognize that some elements of our history and culture need to be understood, not because we’re proud of them, but because they remain part of a shared past that included ugly as well as praiseworthy elements.”
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Ogemdi Ude ’12, choreographer, educator “I think rooting my practice, rooting the ways that I approach creativity and dance is essential because we all have bodies and our bodies hold a lot. … [Feelings] don’t just exist in our head or our heart. The ways that we might feel love for others or the ways that we might feel connection to people who are no longer here with us anymore — how does that manifest in our bodies? What happens in our body when we smell a familiar food that our parents used to make? How does that smell warm our body? How does it make you feel a little better? I like to think of this range of ways that the body is really leading us, and it’s really important to sink into what it wants.”
Stephanie Clifford ’96, journalist, novelist “Please ask questions. I think if I have one regret about Exeter, I felt a little shy about asking questions, or I felt they had to be the very smartest questions anybody had heard. You learn as a journalist, ask any question. Ask anything that doesn’t make sense, anything you want to know. Don’t worry about how it sounds. Just ask the question.” E
To watch videos of these assemblies, go to exeter.edu/exeter-live.
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Academic Support THE LEARNING CENTER IS HERE TO HELP By Patrick Garrity
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t’s quiet for the moment in Room 106
Students meet up in Phillips Hall during The Learning Center’s open hours — just one resource in Exeter’s expanding academic support program.
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of Phillips Hall as Kira Ferdyn ’22 does homework on a Thursday evening. An English classroom by day, Room 106 is the Spanish peer tutoring section of The Learning Center on this night, where students seeking help with a Spanish assignment can find support from Ferdyn, in her sixth year studying the language. Down the hall, other peer tutors offer help in Latin, Chinese, French and German. Support from instructors in math, the sciences and writing is available in the other direction. A dry-erase board in the first-floor lobby steers drop-ins to the appropriate room. This Phillips Hall transformation occurs each weeknight throughout the school year, becoming a designated space for anyone who wants academic help. The Learning Center program is a student-focused pillar of The Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) — Harkness outreach and programs for educators are the others — and is an expansion of what began for writing and math a few years ago. The recurring evening hours at the one location are meant to provide structure and predictable opportunities to seek help — or simply to keep kids on track. “Our goal has always been to have the CTL’s student support to be for every student. It’s not intended to be only for times when a student is struggling,” says Meg Foley, the Michael Ridder ’58 Distinguished Professor in History who has spearheaded the center’s development. “We want to build on our existing culture that asking for help is just a regular part of a good education.” That can be a big adjustment for students arriving at Exeter who are accustomed to excelling. “They know they are here to stretch themselves, but when the stretching is happening, sometimes they doubt themselves, and we want to help them with that adjustment,” Foley says. “Part of that adjustment is asking for help, not just worrying or struggling alone.” Laura Marshall, a math instructor and the dean of academic affairs, says the situation can be challenging for a student who suddenly needs to work to earn the grades that once came easily. “On top of that, they look around at their friends who seem to be doing just fine and they are not going to the Learning Centers. So, they then develop more doubt, and it begins to feel as though the centers are only for those who are really struggling and they do not want to identify as that student and are convinced that they can turn things around on their own. It becomes this cycle.”
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The inclusion of peer tutors has helped. Ferdyn, a two-year senior day student from Exeter, was identified as a top student in Spanish and invited to join the center as a peer tutor. She says some students feel more comfortable revealing their struggles to schoolmates. “I think often, when meeting with teachers, there can be pressure to seem fully prepared, and to understand what’s going on right away,” she says, “but with peers, you can be a little bit more candid. I think this helps people actually get the help they need, and potentially connect with someone new along the way.” The peer tutoring aspect of the center is a formalized extension of what has been happening organically in dorm common rooms for decades. Many dorms keep lists of which students are strong in specific subjects and can assist with a homework assignment or problem. Those impromptu tutorials provide the faculty with a blueprint. “There’s a healthy culture of getting help from peers in the dorms, at least there is in Webster, where I’m dorm head, so one of the inspirations for my work is talking to the students about the kind of help they ask for from their peers,” says Alex Myers ’96, an English instructor who is working with Foley and Marshall to develop the center. “What I’ve observed is that students like to start the work on their own, work until they get stuck, and then ask someone for a little nudge. So, in thinking of the Learning Centers, we wanted to have a space where students could sit and work and just easily lean over and ask for help — it didn’t have to be a big deal.” English Instructor Genny Moriarty helped to introduce a series of seminars for writers to entice students to visit the center. Featured topics have included journalistic writing; digital literacy and information fluency; proper citing of sources; and submitting work for writing contests. “Genny really envisions building the writing center into a ‘place for writers,’ which includes but is not limited to a place to get help on an assignment,” Foley says. “Some of the sessions are working in that direction and we hope to do more of that.” Exeter’s academic support resources extend beyond The Learning Center, of course. Academic advisers are constant advocates in students’ lives, and Learning Specialist Jonathan Nydick is dedicated full-time to work with students in select content areas and in study skills development, including memory, note taking, test taking, reading and time management. All of these efforts show progress, even on a relatively quiet Thursday evening mid-term. A half-dozen students are spread around the Elting Room working alone or in pairs while Science Instructor Shimaa Ghazal helps a student. Next door, History Instructor Kirsten Russell meets with a student working on a paper. The Learning Center is gaining traction. “One of my favorite success stories comes from an earlier iteration of the writing center,” Myers says. “We had a senior who came in because his college counselor told him he needed some help on his college essay. … He had a session, and sort of sat in stunned silence for a moment and then said, ‘That was so helpful,’ like he couldn’t believe that academic assistance would be useful. “He came back several more times and then became a kind of Johnny Appleseed in his dorm, bringing uppers and lowers over to the writing center and telling them how great it was and not to wait until senior year. That was really gratifying.” E
“We wanted to have a space where students could sit and work and just easily lean over and ask for help — it didn’t have to be a big deal.”
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CAMPUS LIFE AT A GLANCE
IN COMMUNITY: The assembly program returns to normalcy this spring as musician Hrishikesh Hirway ’96 gives the first in-person assembly address to the entire student body since February 2020.
WRITING THE BODY: English Instructor Chelsea Woodard’s class visits the Lamont Gallery for a two-day project inspired by the “Informing Memory” exhibit.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOY CHI ’23, PATRICK GARRIT Y AND WILLIAM PARK ’22
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BE KIND: ESSO members offer a gentle reminder to spread good vibes with a board of prompts set up in Agora on Random Acts of Kindness Day.
A REASON TO SMILE: Students flash their pearly whites when indoor mask mandates are lifted.
PAINT NIGHT: Alysha Lai ’23 channels her inner artist during a paint-your-own pottery, self-care event.
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UNSILENCED: Shalom Headly ’22 takes the mic during a student-led social justice evening of art, music and poetry ahead of Exeter’s celebration of the life of Martin Luther King Jr.
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Exonians in Action ST U D E N T S E XC E L I N S C I E N C E , M U S I C, W R I T I N G A N D M O R E By Sarah Pruitt ’95
Neil Chowdhury ’22 takes the U.S. Capitol Building steps in Washington, D.C.
SCIENCE TALENT SEARCH WINNER
When Neil Chowdhury ’22 first
joined MIT PRIMES, the high school research program in mathematics, engineering and science run by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he was interested in working on a project in computer science. He didn’t expect to be paired with a mentor in the unfamiliar field of computational biology, or to end up developing a computer model to study the 3D structure of the human genome. As luck would have it, that’s just what happened — and Chowdhury made the most of it. “I got to work with new data that’s basically been in existence for
Mock Trial Teams Finish 1-2-3 at State Championships Exonian argumentative (and theatrical) talent ran deep during the New Hampshire Mock Trial Championships in February, with Big Red teams capturing the top three spots. John Lee ’22, Arhon Strauss ’23, Angela Zhang ’23, Teja Vankireddy ’22, Sav Bartkovich ’23, Michael Hsieh ’23 and Charles Potjer ’24 defeated their Exeter teammates Colin Jung ’24, Selim Kim ’24, Anderson Lynch ’23, Michael Nardone ’24, Liam Brown ’23, Angelina Gong ’25, David Goodall ’24, Alysha Lai ’23 and Amara Nwuneli ’25 by only four points in the final round, earning the chance to compete in the National High School Mock Trial Championship that will be held virtually in May.
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only about 20 years,” he says. “I was really excited by the idea of being one of the first people to examine that data and see what we can learn from it.” The resulting project, which uses polymer simulation to investigate how human DNA is affected by the modification of proteins implicated in colon cancer, earned Chowdhury a spot as one of 40 finalists (out of some 1,800 original entrants) in the 2022 Regeneron Science Talent Search. After a rigorous week of presenting his work to the judging panel and bonding with his fellow competitors in Washington, D.C., in mid-March, he captured fifth place, bringing home an impressive $90,000 in prize money. Launched in 1942 by the Society for Science, the Science Talent Search is the nation’s oldest and most prestigious high school science competition, aiming to identify and encourage the science and engineering pioneers of the future. Past recipients have gone on to win the Nobel Prize and National Medal of Science,
Gold Medal in Academic Writing
Exonians Bound for Carnegie Hall
Parmis Mokhtari-Dizaji ’24 won the gold medal in the fall 2021 cycle of the annual Academic Writing Contest held by the Harvard International Review, a quarterly magazine focusing on international affairs and featuring articles and commentary by leading scholars and policymakers worldwide. In addition to writing her essay, which explored the role of COVID-19 in isolating supply chain networks and accelerating deglobalization, Mokhtari-Dizaji gave a 15-minute presentation and oral defense of her argument before a board of the magazine’s judges.
Two Exeter musicians have been selected to join the Carnegie Hall National Youth Orchestra, a monthlong summer program of intensive musical training and performance. Violinist Jane Park ’24 and bassoonist Adam Tang ’25 will join the prestigious youth ensemble starting in late July for a week in residence at Purchase College, State University of New York, then head to Miami to work side by side with the New World Symphony Orchestra and perform at the Frank Gehry-designed New World Center. The ensemble will then return to New York City for a week of training, culminating with a performance in Carnegie Hall’s famed Stern Auditorium.
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Chowdhury explains his prize-winning project during the Regeneron competition.
Students, Faculty and Alums Collaborate on High-Level Research Study Current Exeter student Ella Kim ’23 and recent grad Catherine Griffin ’19 are among the co-authors of a new study published in the journal G3: Genes|Genomes|Genetics this spring. Titled “Transgenic Drosophila Lines for LexA-dependent Gene and Growth Regulation,” the study highlights work that led to the CRISPR-based course taught in spring 2021 by Science Instructors Anne Rankin ’92 and Townley Chisholm, as well as a new curriculum developed by Exeter Summer teacher Liz Morse based on experimental genetics. Rankin, Chisholm and Morse are also among the study’s co-authors, along with Dr. Seung Kim ’81 of the Stanford University School of Medicine and students and instructors from the Lawrenceville School, Oxford University and Stanford.
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among myriad honors. Last year, Exeter’s Yunseo Choi ’21 joined their ranks, taking home first place for her project on matching theory. In a video shown during the awards ceremony, Chowdhury said he draws inspiration from working with his fellow Exonians, including younger students. He serves as head or co-head of Exeter’s physics, math and chemistry clubs as well as the Science Bowl team. Chowdhury also credits Science Instructors Alison Hobbie and J. Albert Léger and Math Instructor Diana Davis with supporting his research and guiding his broader STEM education at Exeter. Beyond the Regeneron competition, Chowdhury sees a broader purpose for his prize-winning project, titled “Modeling the Effect of Histone Methylation on Chromosomal Organization in Colon Cancer Cells.” He plans to continue building on his work through an ongoing affiliation with the Mirny Lab at MIT, where he will attend college next year. “The 3D genome is likely important for a number of genetic processes, like gene regulation, gene expression and even mitosis, the formation of chromosomes,” Chowdhury says. “Trying to explain the actual molecular mechanisms that give rise to those effects will help us gain a fundamental understanding of how that works.” E
“I was really excited by the idea of being one of the first people to examine that data and see what we can learn from it.”
Math Club Hosts International Middle School Competition
National Ocean Sciences Bowl Debut After officially launching during the winter term, Exeter’s new Ocean Awareness and Action Club (O2AC) got off to a running start thanks to a last-minute entry into the Nor’easter Bowl, a regional ocean science academic competition that is part of the National Ocean Sciences Bowl (NOSB). “We completely crushed it,” says club co-head Tanya Das ’22, who competed on the winning team alongside co-head Ariana Thornton ’24, Ayman Naseer ’24, Alexander Luna ’24 and Helena Kline ’24. They will now represent Exeter for the first time ever in the NOSB finals, held virtually on May 6-15, 2022. Meanwhile, Das and her fellow O2AC members are looking to continue educating themselves as well as recruit new members and potentially find alumni speakers to bolster the club’s focus on raising awareness about — and taking action to combat — marine pollution. “Our current project is the ocean link project, where we’re creating a website [that shows] different people at Exeter and their connection to the ocean,” she says. “Right now the ocean seems kind of far away, kind of separate, and we want to make it seem closer and show how we’re all connected to it.”
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The blizzard conditions on January 30 didn’t prevent 35 Exeter students — all members of the Math Club — from hosting a math competition attended by nearly 800 middle school students from around the world. Teams of up to four students faced off in the live online competition, which included an individual round, team round and a high-stakes “guts round” of 24 questions answered in only 75 minutes. Kevin Cong ’22, Neil Chowdhury ’22, Jacob David ’22, Lucy Xiao ’22, Eric Yang ’22, Max Xu ’23, Alan Bu ’24 and other Math Club leaders devoted long hours to writing and editing problems of varying difficulty, producing the competition, grading the responses and conducting statistical analysis. They also hosted two live panels during the competition, covering “Math Life at Exeter” and women and nonbinaryidentifying people in the mathematical professions.
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The Kirtland Society By Jennifer Wagner
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When was the club founded? The club was
founded by Lawrence “Larry” Herrmann ’53, Preston says, and established by vote of the faculty in September 1952. “It will not purely be a scholarly group discussing rules of syntax,” said Herrmann at the time. “It will be more organized and less social than the regional clubs.” A month later, 17 Latin 3 and 4 students attended the first Kirtland Society meeting, which featured a lecture on the “Ironies of Virgil,” delivered by Instructor in Latin Howard S. Stuckey. What do they do? Lots! The club staged its first play — a reading of Aristophanes’ Frogs — in January 1956 and soon after featured its first student lecture on “The Roman Art of Eating,” delivered by William “Bill” Imes ’60. Its intellectual and cultural endeavors have only grown since. Beyond weekly meetings in the Latin Study and group dinners, the club organizes social events such as the annual Latin Carol Celebration, field trips to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the raucous Roman Banquet, in which students and faculty donned in Roman attire dine on authentic Roman cuisine while listening to poetry. Club members also partake in local
and national events like Certamen competition and the New Hampshire Junior Classical League Quidquid, a winter carnival in which students run classically themed booths featuring gladiatorial combat, mythological face painting, and amulet making. What is Certamen? It’s a quiz-bowlstyle game in which teams of up to four students compete to answer questions about Latin grammar and literature, classical culture, history and mythology and the relationships between those topics and the modern world.
Top: Kirtland Society club members compete in chariot racing. Bottom: The club’s namesake, John
Want to take the quiz? Here is a question
C. Kirtland, instructor in Latin from 1897 to 1939.
from the 2021 Yale Certamen: Only an ambidextrous Paeonian named Asteropaeüs was able to wound what man, who battles the god of the corpsechoked Scamander during his return to fighting in The Iliad? * Where’s the club’s mystery website?
Mark Zuckerberg ’02 built a website for the club that is still up. Preston stumbled upon it in 2018. The URL? You’ll have to go on the same adventure Preston did to find it! E
ANSWER: ACHILLES
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*
enimus victum! We come to conquer! That’s the rallying call of Societas Kirtlandi, or the Kirtland Society, a tightknit group on campus who relish all things ancient. “We are a family, united by a common love for the Classics and by a certain divine madness!” says Nick Unger ’90, instructor in Classical Languages and the club’s faculty adviser since 2004. “Where else in the world can you fight with (foam) swords, ride a chariot and speak a dead language?” While some say the club’s “origin is shrouded in the mists of time,” we asked former club co-head and unofficial historian Charlie Preston ’21 to pull back the curtain and tell us more.
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ON STAGE
Theater The mainstage came alive this winter with the musical adaptation of Shakespeare;s romantic comedy Twelfth Night during three in-person performances at The David E. and Stacey L. Goel Center for Theater and Dance.
Priya Nwakanma ’23 stretches during a scene in the New Play Ensemble’s production of Sarah DeLappe’s The Wolves.
Above: Music Department Chair Kristofer Johnson conducts the Twelfth Night’s pit orchestra, in his first theatrical collaboration with Lauren Josef, the musical’s director and the chair of the Department of Theater and Dance.
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PEA Concert Band with Instructor in Music and Director of Bands Marcus Rabb (second from right)
Nina Scott Webber ’22
Music Audiences soaked in the sounds of global rhythms, jazz, and chamber and symphony orchestras during this winter’s concert series.
Hannah Dirsa ’24
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Reilly Piersimoni ’24
PHOTOGRAPHS BY CHRISTIAN HARRISON AND JOY CHI ’23
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Dance The Winter Dance Company soars during their performance of “Family,” a student-choreographed work inspired by the bonds of family, in all its forms.
Sophie Zhu ’24 and Anne Chen ’22
Moksha Akil ’22
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PHOTOGRAPHS BY CHRISTIAN HARRISON
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YOU’VE GOT MAIL! Finding out that you’ve been offered admission to the Academy is one of those moments that you never forget. The relief! The exhilaration! The sense that life is about to change in a really amazing way. This year, the admissions team read more than 3,100 completed applications from students hailing from 98 countries, 47 U.S. states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. The good news was delivered to prospective Exonians in a style commensurate with their efforts. Along with the personalized letter of acceptance, students received a fun-filled welcome box and an invitation to Experience Exeter — the Academy’s first on-campus revisit days since 2019. E
Scan this QR code with your smartphone’s camera to watch the video sent to newly admitted students.
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PHOTOGRAPHS BY CHRISTIAN HARRISON
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EXETER DECONSTRUCTED T H E S C H O O L W E L O V E I N D E TA I L By Patrick Garrity
The Sundial It has been telling time for a century — when the sun shines, at least — but the sundial on the south side of campus reflects Exeter history, too. The cast-iron timepiece atop a carved stone pedestal was installed in 1925, the same year the dorms that surround it, Amen, Cilley and Wentworth halls, were dedicated. Those dorms are named for revered Exeter educators from the 19th century. The pedestal bears the names of those who paid to build the structures.
AMEN HALL WENTWORTH HALL CILLEY HALL Built 1925 with gifts from the alumni and friends of the Academy whose names are inscribed hereon The roster is a who’s who of famed Exeter benefactors. Thomas Lamont ’88 and William Boyce Thompson ’90 were banking and finance tycoons whose donations paid for the school’s infirmary, gymnasium, administration building and numerous dorms. James Norman Hill ’89 is best known for paying for the bridge that connects campus to playing fields across the Exeter River. Edward Stephen Harkness’ legacy endures in every Academy classroom 90 years after his most impactful gift helped reimagine PEA’s pedagogy. Also among the 19 names are Theodore Newton Vail, the visionary leader of AT&T; Morton D. Hull ’85, a five-term congressman from Illinois; and Bradley Webster Palmer ’84, a developing partner of Gillette Safety Razor Corp. and United Fruit Company, the massive agricultural conglomerate whose outsized and often exploitative influence in Central and South America politics inspired the unflattering term “banana republic.” The sundial, pedestal and dais were relocated from the center of the quad to be nearer to Amen Hall during a renovation in 1980. E
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Literary Lifeboat A C O N V E R S AT I O N W I T H N O V E L I S T P A M E L A E R E N S ’ 8 1 By Daneet Steffens ’82
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Part of the message of Middlemarch and the Imperfect Life is that books not only transport us, but, at times, rescue us. At one point you write, “I know what it is like to be saved by sentences.” How did Middlemarch rescue you?
Before I started writing this book, I was already aware of the way in which slowing down and reading sentence by sentence had helped me, especially in early decades of my life. Following the sentences of a writer like Eliot requires you to pay attention. The formal quality of her writing brings you into contact with beauty, and I find that really restorative. In times of distress, my tendency is to overthink and over-feel; reading a book like Middlemarch slows me down to the pace and rhythm of the sentences, but it also keeps me alert and engaged in a positive way. Eliot gives you this picture of a much larger world, a vaster canvas and a wider context. In a moment of crisis when the world narrows down to that crisis and you can’t see anything else, a book like hers is a reminder that
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e can all think of a book that entertained us, moved us, or inspired us to think or act differently. For Pamela Erens ’81, that touchstone piece of literature was George Eliot’s 1872 novel Middlemarch. In her new book, Middlemarch and the Imperfect Life — part of Ig Publishing’s Bookmarked series, in which writers examine a work that has shaped their life — Erens melds memoir and literary criticism as she examines the impact Eliot’s novel has had on her as a college student, as a young mother and as a mature writer in her own right. Throughout, Erens leverages Eliot’s insights as lessons in empathy, in the benefits of community, and as a reminder of the world’s broad canvas. Erens, who published her debut novel, The Understory, in 2007, has published three more critically acclaimed novels since. Between them, her books have garnered a terrific range of recognition, from being finalists for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for First Fiction and the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, to receiving NPR Best Book honors. We spoke with her about her latest work and just how words from 1872 remain relevant and inspire her writing today.
history is long and full of tragedy, but time keeps moving on, people keep going. It doesn’t diminish the pain of truly extraordinary things like the challenges of COVID, but it reminds you that human beings tend to muddle through everything for better or for worse, that we do what we can do to get through. You discuss so many wonderful elements in Middlemarch — the way Eliot writes about community, how she approaches her characters. Did you learn something about empathy from her?
I hope I did. It’s certainly something I’ve always been drawn to in her work — that incredible generosity and that compassion and understanding for all her characters, even the quote-unquote bad ones. You hear people talk about Eliot’s narrator as God-like — omniscient, sort of
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a busybody, has a comment about everything, talks too much. But what truly makes her God-like is that she has the compassion that comes from understanding as much as possible about every facet of her characters. It’s the compassion that the rest of us could have, and Eliot comes about as close as a human being can come to that largeness of vision. You are a graduate of classic psychoanalysis. Are there elements from that experience that you apply in your writing?
Yes. There’s an affinity between the free-association process and how I begin a piece of fiction. In the early stages of drafting or when I’m creating something new for an existing draft,
“In times of distress, my tendency is to overthink and over-feel; reading a book like Middlemarch slows me down to the pace and rhythm of the sentences.” it’s a semi-dreamlike state. It’s not like I’m not conscious of being in a chair at the computer, but it’s a state where I’m allowing my mind to drift and catch stray images or words and just write them down. At that point, they don’t have to make sense to me; they don’t have to seem relevant. I trust that there’s some relevance to them because I’ve associated to them, and I think analysis taught me to be comfortable with that process. At Exeter, were there particular experiences that shaped you?
I took Mr. [Fred] Tremallo’s “teacher’s choice” class senior year and he had us read Proust. I was blown away — it was different from anything I’d ever read. When I think about it now, it was a forerunner to reading Middlemarch because Proust is so dense, with these long, long sentences, that force you to
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slow way down. I remember reading Swann’s Way in the library, the unfamiliar syntax and the way that Proust analyzes things. It was like inhabiting someone else’s brain; I was so excited by that possibility. And I remember being in Mr. [Peter] Greer’s class, him talking about Milan Kundera’s newly published The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, and me running to the Exeter Bookstore, buying it and reading it. My time at Exeter definitely shaped me as a writer, by exposing me to amazing literature that really sparked a passion for more. Is there a recent time when you reminded yourself why you wanted to be a writer?
In the past few years, I’ve had periods when I was writing less, partly because I’ve taken on more freelance editorial work. And when I get back to writing, every time I think, “Oh, I’ve forgotten how right it feels!” I feel very centered when I’m writing. The writing doesn’t have to be good — I produce a lot of crap — but when I’m doing it, I just feel right. I realize that, for better or for worse and regardless of the quality of what I’m writing, I do it just because it’s what I need to be doing. And what was it like, writing about Middlemarch for your latest book?
As I wrote the book, my interest ended up circling around the issue of narratives and how sometimes we invest in a narrative and then we discover we can’t sustain that narrative anymore. What do we do when that happens? It felt really important to me as a subject — maybe it’s just the age that I’ve reached, or what was going on for me at the time I was writing, plus COVID. That is probably at the heart of what I wanted to convey: that it can feel devastating when we have to give up or revise a narrative, but we can survive that. That’s very much something that Eliot’s talking about in Middlemarch. I would love to think that my book would get a few more people to read hers. It’s a novel that everybody’s heard of but that many people haven’t read. People seem to be intimidated by it because of its length and the seriousness associated with it. It’s not serious in a dreary way; it’s extremely absorbing and at times quite funny. So much has been written about it already, but I hope I still had something relevant to say. E
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Alumni are encouraged to advise the Bulletin editor (bulletin@exeter.edu) of their own publications, recordings, films, etc., in any field, and those of their classmates, for inclusion in future Exonians in Review columns. Please send a review copy of your published work to the editor to be considered for an extended profile or review in future issues. Works can be sent to: Phillips Exeter Academy, The Exeter Bulletin, 20 Main Street, Exeter, NH 03833. ALUMNI 1958—Neal B. Freeman. Walk With Me: An Invitation to Faith. (self-published, 2021) 1960—Jack Fitzpatrick. “Applying History and Psychohistory as a Business Consultant,” article. (The Many Roads of the Builders of Psychohistory, ORI Academic Press, 2021) 1962—Kidder Smith. Abruptly Dogen. (Punctum Books, 2022) 1963—Edwin Bernbaum. Sacred Mountains of the World, 2nd edition. (Cambridge University Press, 2022) 1965—Ridge Kennedy. The Richest Man in New Babylon: An Inspirational Story about Money and Wealth Re-Imagined and Updated for Today’s Economy. (Hedgehog House, 2020) 1966—Henry Sayre. Value in Art: Manet and the Slave Trade. (University of Chicago Press, 2022) 1966—Peter Thompson, translation. Black Jasmine. (Diálogos Books, 2022) —The Belly. (Diálogos Books, 2021) 1967—Jonathan Galassi, editor. The FSG Poetry Anthology. (Macmillan, 2021) 1970—William E. Forbath, with Joseph Fishkin. The Anti-Oligarchy Constitution: Reconstructing the Economic Foundations of American Democracy. (Harvard University Press, 2022) 1973—Ulysses G. Dietz. Growing Up Grant: A Gay Life in the Shadow of Ulysses S. Grant. (self-published, 2021) 1975—Walter Stahr. Salmon P. Chase: Lincoln’s Vital Rival. (Simon & Schuster, 2022) 1979—David Loud. Facing the Music: A Broadway Memoir. (Regan Arts, 2022)
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1981—Claudia Putnam. “Little Men,” poem. (Press 53, Issue 211, 2022) —“Path of Service,” story. (The Write Launch, 2022) 1985—Greg Anderson. “Introduction to the Templatic Verb Morphology of Birhor (Birho), a Kherwarian Munda Language,” article. (Language and Linguistics, Vol. 22, Issue 1, January 2021) 1998—Christena Cleveland. God Is a Black Woman. (HarperOne, 2022) 1998—Kirstin Valdez Quade. The Five Wounds: A Novel. (W.W. Norton & Company, 2021) 1999—Sasha Rose Oxnard. A Sacred Beginning Nurturing Your Body, Mind, and Soul during Baby’s First Forty Days. (Ancient Faith Publishing, 2021) 2000—William Richards. Bamboo Contemporary: Green Houses Around the Globe. (Princeton Architectural Press, 2022) 2008—Tara Burton. The World Cannot Give: A Novel. (Simon & Schuster, 2022) 2014—Oishi Banerjee. “AI in Health and Medicine,” article. (Nature Medicine, Vol. 28, January 2022) 2015—Francis Lee. Penta Chung Gene Hyung. (self-published, 2021) FAC U LT Y Todd Hearon. Crows in Eden. (Salmon Poetry, 2022) Erica Plouffe Lazure. Proof of Me and Other Stories. (New American Press, 2022) Tara Lewis. Solo exhibition of new paintings at the Louis K. Meisel Gallery in New York City, spring 2022. Alex Myers. The Symmetry of Stars. (HarperCollins, 2021)
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Exeter’s Boatman BOB BURNHAM KEEPS ROWING PROGRAM IN FULL SWING By Adam Loyd
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Bob Burnham at work inside the Saltonstall Boathouse and pulling in a boat on the Squamscott River.
t’s early March and the thawing Squamscott River creeks and groans under the midday sun. Stranded ice shoves turn to slush and sift through shoreline rocks while melting snow drips in rhythmic time off the roof of the William G. Saltonstall Boathouse. Inside, hunched over a workbench, Boathouse Manager Bob Burnham needs none of nature’s cues to know spring is coming. “From the start of the school year on, I’m in here most days getting ready for the [crew] season — running the building, keeping the equipment in good shape and anything that’s needed, really,” he says in a sharp New England accent. “When spring hits, it’s long hours, six days a week. I bring the boats to the racing events wherever that might be. I’m in control of basically everything that’s going on other than teaching the kids to row.” For Burnham, when the boathouse is in full bloom, there’s nowhere he’d rather be. “One hundred forty students, 10 boats out, this place is packed. I love it,” he says. “The kids are great to work with, to be around. They’re always happy, upbeat. They work harder than anybody you’ve ever seen for a sport because this sport is not easy.” Burnham’s voyage to becoming Exeter’s resident boatman began along the banks of the Merrimack River in Amesbury, Massachusetts. Through a co-op program at his high school, Burnham was able to work for credit and pay at the legendary Lowell’s Boat Shop, where he learned the craft of boatmaking. He stayed on at Lowell’s while completing his trade-school degree in boat building. “After I graduated, I was working full-time and building all kinds of stuff, cigarette boats, you name it, but they weren’t carbon fiber back then like these,” he says, gesturing to the fleet of racing shells hanging throughout the boathouse. “They were wood.” From there, Burnham embarked on a 24-year career with the Essex County Sheriff ’s Department in Massachusetts, retiring as a deputy sheriff in 2010. A few months later, PHOTOGRAPHS BY CHRISTIAN HARRISON
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Burnham bumped into a friend, then-Exeter Campus Safety Director Jim Gilmore, who suggested Burnham join the department. Burnham did just that, working as a campus safety officer before moving into his current role in 2015. During his time as a police officer, Burnham continued building and restoring boats as a hobby and as a way to make some extra cash, operating out of a rented storage unit. Now, Burnham relishes the opportunity to work out of the nearly 10,000-square-foot Saltonstall Boathouse. “This place is unbelievable,” he says. “For a high school boathouse, this is second to none.” Pass by on Water Street in downtown Exeter during the warmer months and you might hear a Bon Jovi power ballad spilling out of the open bay doors as Burnham tends to any number of fix-its. “Nothing goes out [for repair], I do everything in-house,” Burnham says with a confidence anchored by experience. “If they hit a log out in the river or something, I’ll put the radio on and get to it. It just puts me in a different place. Fixing it, sanding it down, painting and then stepping back and looking at it.” Over the decades, Burnham estimates he’s built hundreds of crew boats and fixed even more, but he’s never taken one out for a spin. “I’m a little too big of a guy to sit in one,” he says with a laugh. “I like my boats with a throttle.” E
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“One hundred forty students, 10 boats out, this place is packed. I love it.”
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Record Breakers By Brian Muldoon
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pdating the record boards in the Nekton Pool and Thompson Field House
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is becoming a rich, annual tradition as Big Red student-athletes continue to shatter longstanding marks. Swimmer Sydney Kang ’22 was an absolute standout in the pool this winter. She now holds a whopping seven of the 11 school records in girls swimming, as well as a New England record. Kang set the New England, school and facility record in the 100-yard butterfly at Franklin & Marshall College as she swam to a first-place time of 54.17 at the prestigious Eastern Interscholatics meet, and added a Division I record and New England title to her résumé one week later at the New England Championships. Kang also helped set new marks in the relays as she teamed up with a talented group, including Sophie Phelps ’25, Brianna Cong ’25 and Amy Benson ’23, to break school records in both the 400-yard freestyle relay (3:27.96) and 200-yard freestyle relay (1:35.44). Kang, Benson, Cong and Claire Han ’25 also worked together to set a school record in the 200-medley relay (1:45.61). The Yale-bound senior wraps up her illustrious career with school records in the 200-medley relay, 200 freestyle, 200 individual medley, 50 freestyle, 100 butterfly, 200 freestyle relay and 400 freestyle relay. Alongside Kang, a pair of preps wasted little time in getting their names on the board. Sophie Phelps ’25 smashed a pair of individual records set by Big Red swimming legend Lauren Brady ’07. Phelps swam to a time of 1:51.55 to win a New England title in the 200-yard freestyle, topping Brady’s former top mark of 1:53.12. She then shaved more than five seconds off of Brady’s 2006 record in the 500-yard freestyle, coming in with a time of 5:00.75. Brianna Cong ’25 snapped a nine-year-old record while also earning a New England title in the 100-yard backstroke when she raced to a time of 56.50. The previous record was held by Olivia Jackson ’13. On the track, Byron Grevious ’24 paved the way for the Big Red indoor season with some impressive marks that garnered eyes from around the country. Grevious snapped a 50-year-old school record in the two-mile run with a blistering time of 9:04.27. The previous mark was held by G. Andrew Walker ’72. Grevious, who also was the individual New England cross country champion this past fall, also set a new school mark at 3,000 meters with a time of 8:22.87. Both marks were the fastest by any 10th grader in the country. Jaylen Bennett ’25 set three new Big Red prep records in the 200-meter (23.30), 400-meter (50.31) and 600-meter (1:29.26) races. His performance in the 400-meter run was the fastest of any freshman in the nation. Big Red also established a record in a newly minted event, the 4x400 mixed-gender relay. The relay, which was introduced at the Tokyo Summer Games as a medal event, was added to the Exeter/Andover Prep/Lower meet where William Simpson ’24, Tenley Nelson ’24, Jannah Maguire ’25 and Jaylen Bennett ’25 established a time of 4:05.84. E
Girls 200-medley relay record breakers: (clockwise from top left) Brianna Cong ’25, Amy Benson ’23, Sydney Kang ’22 and Claire Han ’25.
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WINTER E/A The winter edition of the Exeter/ Andover rivalry was reintroduced after a two-year hiatus, but the action and atmosphere
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did not skip a beat, as the games were typical nail-biters and the crowds were as loud as ever. Big Red came out victorious on the day, hosted at Andover, earning a pair of basketball wins, while the two schools split decisions in hockey — all included a heavy dose of suspense and exhilaration. The camaraderie, support, rivalry, and dance-offs always outweigh the wins and losses. — Brian Muldoon
LET’S GO! DA N A B A R B I N M A R KS 1 ,0 0 0 T H GA M E By Brian Muldoon
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oach Dana Barbin has spent his life in a hockey rink.
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Sometimes even when he was not supposed to. The Exeter native — who played at Exeter High School before going on to enjoy an outstanding career at the University of New Hampshire — would occasionally sneak into one of the Academy rinks for an extra skate and workout. For the past 35 years, he’s just walked in the front door. Barbin officially stepped onto campus in 1987 and immediately found a spot behind the boys hockey bench. On Feb. 26, he celebrated his 1,000th game as a coach with a 3-2 victory over — who else — Andover during winter E/A. Barbin spent his first five seasons as an assistant under coach Bill Dennehy before he assumed the head coaching role in 1992. Barbin served as the head coach for the next 29 years before returning to his role as an assistant under current head coach — and his former player — Tim Mitropoulos ’10 in 2021. Barbin has amassed quite the laundry list of accomplishments while building Exeter hockey into one of the premier prep programs in the country. He led Big Red to a 30-3-0 record and a Division I New England title in 1999, and has seen hundreds of former student-athletes continue their careers at the NCAA Division I, II and III levels and 11 former players drafted into the NHL. Barbin, who also played and coached internationally in Denmark in the 1980s, was inducted into the New Hampshire Legends of Hockey in 2011. Over the course of his head coaching career, Barbin put together a staggering 582-235-53 record. Congratulations, Coach! E
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WINTER SPORTS HIGHLIGHTS
GIRLS VARSITY BASKETBALL RECORD: 4-16
Head Coach: Katie Brule Assistant Coach: Katie Powers Captains: Ana Casey ’22, Cecilia Treadwell ’22 MVP: Jac Doucette ’23
GIRLS VARSITY HOCKEY RECORD: 8-11-0
Head Coach: Sally Komarek Assistant Coaches: Jim Tufts, Adam Loyd Captains: Grace Emmick ’22, Victoria Quinn ’22, Shauna Vadeboncoeur ’23, Kathryn Welch ’22, MVP: Samantha Smith ’23
BOYS VARSITY BASKETBALL RECORD: 11-3
Head Coach: Jay Tilton Assistant Coaches: Rick Brault, Phil Rowe Captains: Josh Morissette ’22, Eli Porras ’22 MVPs: Josh Morissette ’22, Chandler Pigge ’22
BOYS VARSITY HOCKEY RECORD: 17-7-3
Head Coach: Tim Mitropoulos Assistant Coaches: Dana Barbin, Mark Evans, Brandon Hew Captains: Kurt Gurkan ’22, Manan Mendiratta ’22 MVP: Michael Salvatore ’23
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BOYS VARSITY WRESTLING RECORD: 10-3 SECOND PLACE NEPSAC CLASS A
Head Coach: David Hudson Assistant Coach: Bob Brown Captains: Zander Galli ’22, Matthew Indelicarto ’22 MVP: Dean Hall ’22
GIRLS VARSITY SQUASH RECORD: 4-6
Head Coach: Lovey Oliff Assistant Coach: Mercy Carbonell Captains: Dorothy Baker ’22, Kate Manderlink ’22, Lucy Weil ’22 MVP: Leandra Sze ’22
BOYS VARSITY SQUASH RECORD: 6-5
Head Coach: Bruce Shang Assistant Coaches: Paul Langford, Will Abisalih Captains: Ben Ehrman ’22, Eric Zhang ’23 MVP: Ben Ehrman ’22
GIRLS VARSITY SWIMMING & DIVING RECORD: 5-1 THIRD PLACE IN NEW ENGLAND
Head Coach: Nicole Benson Assistant Coach: Chelsea Davidson Head Diving Coach: Julie Van Wright Captains: Sydney Kang ’22, Lindsay Machado ’22, Ginny Vazquez-Azpiri ’22, Jamie Carlberg ’22, Katie Dowling ’22 MVP: Sydney Kang ’22
GIRLS VARSITY INDOOR TRACK & FIELD RECORD: 0-1
Head Coach: Ahri Hall Assistant Coaches: Marvin Bennett Ron Edmiston, Steve Holmes, Stephan Lewis, Brandon Newbould Captains: Ifeoma Ajufo ’22, Kaylee Bennett ’23, Kaitlyn Flowers ’22, Catherine Uwakwe ’22 MVP: Ifeoma Ajufo ’22
BOYS VARSITY SWIMMING & DIVING RECORD: 5-1 THIRD PLACE IN NEW ENGLAND
BOYS VARSITY INDOOR TRACK & FIELD RECORD: 1-0
Head Coach: Don Mills Assistant Coach: Meg Blitzshaw Head Diving Coach: Julie Van Wright Captains: Hayden Giles ’22, Ethan Van De Water ’22, Georgie Venci ’22, Jose Vivanco ’22 MVP: Ethan Van De Water ’22
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Head Coach: Ahri Hall Assistant Coaches: Marvin Bennett, Ron Edmiston, Steve Holmes, Stephan Lewis, Brandon Newbould Captains: Bradley St. Laurent ’22, Aiden Silvestri ’22 MVP: Aiden Silvestri ’22 P H O T O G R A P H S B Y D AV I D A R N O L D , P AT R I C K G A R R I T Y, B R I A N M U L D O O N , M A R Y S C H WA L M
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PA I N T I N G S BY R I C H A R D H AY N E S
All Things Being Equal MacArthur Foundation President John Palfrey ’90 and Cameron Frary ’20 discuss equity in education By Cameron Frary ’20
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iversity, equity and inclusion have risen to the forefront of educational thought in recent years. Exeter hired its first director of equity and inclusion in 2018 and accelerated its efforts in DEI after the events of the summer of 2020. This push for equity helped lead Exeter to institute new curricular programs, to devote more administrative attention to DEI topics, and to announce need-blind admissions this past fall, among other initiatives. I recently had the pleasure of discussing this movement for equity with John Palfrey ’90, president of the MacArthur Foundation and former principal of our sister school to the south. During his time at Andover, he helped implement need-blind admissions, and he has continued to support equitable policies at the MacArthur Foundation by leveraging “creative people and institutions” and supporting socially responsible investment. He talks about equity in education as making efforts to safeguard equitable educational outcomes and making sure everyone feels a sense of belonging and can participate fully in school life. Given this conception of equity, I think it’s possible to sort discussions about equity and its promotion into two categories: conversations of policy implementation and conversations about maintaining equity in daily interactions. The former has to do with institutional programs and the latter has to do with the day-to-day experiences of marginalized groups, such as in the classroom. And while conversations about equity in education typically and rightfully often focus on inequities in the public education system, independent boarding schools such as Exeter might be able to support equity in their own important and unique ways.
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First, and perhaps most obviously, the Deed of Gift established Exeter as a school to educate “youth from every quarter,” a straightforward and seemingly simple statement for a diverse student body. As Palfrey notes, the charge highlights the power education has “to bring people together across all kinds of difference in ways that almost nothing else can.” I think that like the U.S. Constitution, the way we interpret those words — and that document as a whole — has evolved over the past 240 years, but the purpose and the message remain much the same. In the 1850s, a commitment to “youth from every quarter” meant building Exeter’s first dorm to support students who couldn’t pay for room and board in town. In the 1950s, it meant expanding financial aid outreach by bringing in newspaper boys from the Midwest. In the 1970s, it meant making sure Exeter was working well for promising young women. Today, it means drawing attention to and supporting students of color and students from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds. The notion that Exeter should be a diverse, national school has its roots in a pro-democracy project. That hope, in 1781, was to help educate the youth of the new nation as a means of strengthening it. This project continues: The kind of intermixing possible at a national school like Exeter, Palfrey says, “could help bridge some of the stark divides that we suffer from as a democracy.” However, given the inequity still present in our society, it’s not easy to figure out exactly what means would best further Exeter’s goals. As Palfrey sees it, persisting inequity seems to indicate that “very few of these programs have worked especially well.” This is not to downplay the significant progress made in the past few decades; we merely point out that institutional policy-
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making is often not as straightforward as one may hope. Further experimentation and exploration are necessary. This is why moves such as instituting need-blind admissions are crucial in ensuring Exeter can make good on its unique position in higher education. The conversations about managing day-to-day interactions within the Academy prove little easier. While it is straightforward to point out the benefits of treating people equitably, humans are notoriously fickle beings and myriad factors may impede our behaving equitably. So, what can we do to make sure our daily interactions support an equitable environment, or at least do not perpetuate inequity? How can we make sure the Harkness table works for everybody? Palfrey thinks that the project starts before anybody walks into a classroom. It entails “approaching the Harkness table with an inclusive mindset and with attention to the students’ various backgrounds and needs.” He says it involves thinking carefully about the questions one poses before class and may require having conversations with students after class. And while Exeter boasts a phenomenal faculty, it can be difficult for even the most skilled instructors to support their students every time they need it and with the right type of support. Addressing errors and learning to fine-tune methods will help ensure support is always there for a struggling student.
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However, there is a robust and growing literature at the intersection of philosophy and psychology that argues on normative and pragmatic grounds that we should address such mistakes without calling into question the character of the person who made the error. People are imperfect, and studies show that to denigrate someone for making an honest mistake tends to alienate peers and undermine the good intent on which they were trying to act. Palfrey and I agree that this method of constructive, amicable feedback can be difficult given the sensitivity of the topics involved, but it seems important to maintain the type of open, honest conversation that allows discussion-based learning to thrive in classrooms, dorms, faculty and trustee meetings — indeed, at all levels of the institution. Exeter has laid significant foundations for further progress in the push for equity. The decision this fall to go need-blind, the creation of a DEI Task Force and the adoption of a DEI vision statement address the challenges of accessibility, and address the hard intellectual work done in conversations about institution-level policy implementation. But the hardest work may be yet to come. It is tricky to balance discretion and the openness that gives Exeter’s distinct pedagogy its strength and helps bind the community together. Figuring out what to do when things go awry is likewise a delicate task. Palfrey and I believe that, while it may be challenging for Exeter’s leadership to guide the community through these difficult topics, their directives in making the Academy a more equitable institution have the potential to invigorate and further strengthen Exeter as a place of learning.
Cameron Frary ’20 is currently a student at Bates College. While at Exeter, he penned columns for The Exonian with a focus on the Academy’s history. He is also the 2020 recipient of the Gordon Editorial Award, given annually to an Exeter student who displays through editorial journalism a passionate dedication to personal freedom, particularly freedom of conscience and its expression.
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CHRISTIAN HARRISON
Equity Initiatives By Stephanie Bramlett, director of equity and inclusion
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t’s hard for me to believe that I am already wrapping up my fourth year at Exeter. I’m grateful to take this moment to reflect upon some of the ways Exeter has grown to become a more diverse, equitable and inclusive community. The Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMA), Dean of Faculty (DOF) and Office of Equity and Inclusion (OEI) teams have evolved and expanded over the past few years. The additions of an Asian student coordinator and an LGBTQA+ student coordinator in OMA, an assistant director in the OEI and an assistant dean in DOF have increased the bandwidth of our offices and the opportunities for broad engagement with the community. An exciting slate of programming is now offered, including a Lunar New Year celebration, Black History Month gala, Dia de Los Muertos, a webinar series and the OMA Leadership Summit. We’ve also created ample opportunities for students to learn about diversity, equity and inclusion within the curriculum. The Core Values Project: Conversations about Anti-oppression, Community Values and Justice is a joint Office of Equity and Inclusion and Dean of Students project that builds on the antiracist minicourses developed last year. Discussion group facilitators work in pairs to pitch project ideas, and their peers select a discussion group that interests them. Some of this year’s Core Values Projects include Balikbayan: The Return Home, Exonians in the Philippines Study Away Proposal; An Artistic Exploration of Queerness: Showcasing Queer Identity Through Art and Performance; and Windows and Mirrors: Multimedia Representation of About the Artist Anti-oppression, Community Values Richard Haynes is an American and Justice at Exeter. painter, photographer, New classes were educator, mentor and advocate also added to the for social justice. Based in New Courses of Instruction, Hampshire, Haynes uses his art including MAT40J: not only to make society aware Mathematics of Social of the invisible in this world but Justice, INT535: Asian also to provoke unity.
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American History and Literature and EXI545: The Intersection of Science, Health and Race in America. I am confident that our students are graduating with the critical-thinking skills they will need to be successful in an increasingly global and interconnected world. The Office of Institutional Advancement has worked with members of the General Alumni Association Board of Directors to bring a series of affinity-based networking opportunities called Identity + Affinity to the alumni community. In late February, a Black Alumni Affinity Programming Committee produced a fantastic program, “For Us, By Us: The History of 164 Years of Black Excellence at Exeter,” in which Alexanderia Baker Haidara ’99 presented her historical research. Big thanks to GAA director Una Basak ’90 and the members of the planning committee, including Haidara, Ciatta Baysah ’97, Julian Bobb ’90, Lori Lincoln ’86, Lars Ojukwu ’03, Mike Oneal ’74 and Russell Washington ’89. The Identity + Affinity Series continues with programming for Asian American/Pacific Islander, LGBTQA+ and Hispanic/Latinx affinities. I’ll be joining IA “on the road” this year to bring Core Values Project discussions to alums and parents all around the country. You will have the opportunity to experience the same types of conversations we are having here on campus. Looking ahead, we will host the Exeter Diversity Institute, or EDI, this summer, with educators from all over the country coming to campus to discuss how to navigate identity and promote equity in school communities and at the Harkness table. In August, we’ll have an EDI for Academy employees, and we’ll welcome a talented and diverse cohort of new colleagues to PEA. September will kick off the second year of the Equitable Exeter Experience, a pre-orientation program for students of color, students with high financial need, students who are the first in their families to go to college and students who are members of the LGBTQA+ community. One of my favorite things about Exeter is that we are never comfortable with staying the same. We are always looking for ways to grow, progress and improve. I’m proud of this community and I can’t wait to see what the future brings for us.
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JOANNE LEMBO
Student Voices By Adam Loyd
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or decades, athletes have utilized their fame to
amplify calls for civil rights and social change. Think Muhammad Ali, Jackie Robinson, LeBron James and Naomi Osaka, to name a few. Inspired by the legacies of such all-time greats, a group of Big Red athletes created a space on campus to contribute to Exeter’s efforts in promoting racial equity. Founded in 2021 by Ifeoma Ajufo ’22, Mohamed Kane ’22, Manan Mendiratta ’22, and Akili Tulloch ’22, Athletes for Racial Justice came together as a melding of a Core Values Project and independent work under the guidance of former physical education instructor and track coach Toyin Augustus. “It was really motivational seeing those athletes in 2020 who did speak up and stopped playing as a form of protest,” says Ajufo, a member of the Exeter girls soccer and track teams. “That geared a lot of our conversations and how we view ourselves. We’re more than just athletes. We have a voice and we have the platform at Exeter to try and speak up against these issues.” The group of about 30 student-athletes of color meet regularly to discuss current events, brainstorm ways to promote equity and inclusion on campus, and work with other like-minded student groups. “We had a joint meeting with the Girls in Sports club that was open to all Exonians where we talked about intersections between athletes of color and female athletes,” Kane says. “I thought it was really successful.” The club also has an open line to the Academy’s administration through weekly conversations with Athletics Director Jason Baseden and with the support of Dean of Multicultural Affairs Sherry Hernández and Associate Dean of Multicultural Affairs Hadley Camilus.
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Athletes for Racial Justice members and faculty; club founders Mohamed Kane, Ifeoma Ajufo, Manan Mendiratta and Akili Tulloch.
“There is no substitute for direct dialogue with feedback from the students,” Baseden says. “We want to make sure all of our student-athletes have a great experience regardless of their identities.” These ongoing conversations help Ajufo and her clubmates feel heard. “When we present our problems to the administration, they’re really willing to listen to us,” Ajufo says. One shared initiative between the group and the administration is to create more diversity on the rosters of traditionally homogenous teams. “Sports are passions and it’s something that you put a lot of time into, and the lack of representation shouldn’t be what steers you away from playing a sport,” Kane says. “Trying to recruit more diversity in the coaching staff would encourage more people to go into these sports,”Ajufo says. During the winter term, the group hosted a dodgeball tournament in the William Boyce Thompson Field House that included the Office of Multicultural Affairs faculty, with a surprising result. “OMA beat all of our teams,” Ajufo says shaking her head and smiling. With the club heads set to graduate in the spring, Kane hopes the group has established a foundation for future student-athletes of color to build on. “Being able to continue those open conversations with the Athletics Department and participate in making those decisions that will impact the athletes of color on campus, that’s one of the biggest legacies that I want to have left behind.”
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The Art of Community Each Tuesday morning during the winter term, a group of students and faculty used pencils, ink, paint and collage to get to know one another on a deeper level. Inspired by prompts generated by the group, each person in the Visions and Voices: A Sketchbook Collaboration class would draw one page of their own work in a shared sketchbook, then start another halfpage of work, which was then added to the following week by
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another member of the group. “The overlap would enable the artworks to be ‘in conversation’ with each other,” according to the course description. Core Values Project courses like this one were developed to build upon the anti-oppression work begun last year. The hope was “to celebrate each participant’s experiences, cultures and perspectives and explore different methods of expression.” E
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GLOBAL CITIZEN
E X A M I N I N G M Y U N D E R S TA N D I N G OF THE WORLD
By Renee Bertrand ’21
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hen I first learned about the Perrin Fellowship, which gives the recipient a grant for independent postgraduate study, I thought of my grandparents. If they hadn’t left their respective homelands for new educational opportunities, I wouldn’t be here. Because of them, my family is a mixture of different cultures, nationalities and ethnicities. My grandparents were the ones who assured me it was OK to leave home at 14 to attend Phillips Exeter Academy. They have taught me to unabashedly pursue the world, to find love in new languages and to empathize with cultures I didn’t understand. Through my relentless determination to make something of myself and to better the community around me, I lost a part of my family’s teachings. When it came time to apply for the fellowship, I had seen my life as a series of goals to achieve, but I realized that’s not what I wanted. I imagined that’s not what James Perrin had wanted for himself either. When I was notified that I had won the fellowship, I decided to follow in my family’s footsteps and learn for myself that life is not a straight path from here to the next checkpoint, but a winding trail through green mountains. I chose to take the year to explore who in the world I wanted to be. The academic focus for this year was inspired by an English class I took my upper spring. The Academy had just moved classes online and adopted a pass/fail grading system due to COVID, and my lovely English teacher (now fellowship adviser) Ms. Genny Moriarty offered to let students complete a term-long independent project. I’ve always had a passion for exploring culture through writing,
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and so I decided to create pieces inspired by pre-colonized societies. The pieces made up my senior writing portfolio and won a silver medal and scholarship from the 2021 National Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. They were published as part of the awards’ collection, Best Teen Writing 2021. I wanted my gap year to build on that body of creative fiction and focus on the real-world impacts of colonization. Colonization is the foundation for how countries across the world interact with each other. It has created many of the problems and successes that countries face today. As someone who will be studying international relations at Stanford next fall, who wants to be a future world leader, and whose heritage comes from both the colonized and the colonizer, colonization is a topic I need to explore. I hoped to explore a few guiding questions. How did a society change before and after colonization? What current problems arose because of it? What systems in history have created the global system we see today? Why are some countries so far behind in development? What does development even mean? Why are some societies still under colonization, while others are now independent? Are they truly independent? All in all, I wanted to see on a small scale how the world got to where it is today.
THE PLANNING PROCESS
When I accepted the Perrin Fellowship, in April 2021, I had just received my first COVID vaccine shot. The overwhelming feeling at the time was positive. Borders would open by the summer. Graduation was in-person
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and maskless. Unfortunately, that perspective was exceedingly optimistic. When I began to make travel plans in late July and early August, I contacted dozens of university professors from countries across the globe with specializations in anthropology, history, political science and archaeology. I desired to secure a position as a research assistant or an intern, so that I would have a knowledgeable mentor and vast resources to help guide my exploration. As an 18-year-old solo female traveler, I thought staying on a university campus for a few months, rather than traditional globetrotting, would be the safest bet for both COVID and personal security. And even though it would be more difficult, I wanted to explore cultures that are harder to access, like those in Africa and Polynesia. I received a surprising number of welcoming and enthusiastic responses from universities in South Africa, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, Mexico, Peru, Australia, Aotearoa (New Zealand), Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Samoa, Tonga and French Polynesia. But as the Delta variant shocked the world, those enthusiastic yeses turned into apologetic noes. By mid-August, a cycle kept repeating itself: A professor would say yes, I would meet with them over Zoom and begin setting plans, then receive the fateful email. At one point, I received 12 refusals in one week. And as someone who had just escaped the unprecedentedly competitive college admission cycle unscathed, that level of rejection felt soul crushing. But there was one Nigerian university that remained consistently supportive in having me as a visiting researcher. Set in the heart of the ancient Oyo Empire, the university had a botanical garden, a zoo, a dam and multiple security checkpoints. I would be studying under a professor in both Nigerian history and development studies, and I was incredibly excited. Nigeria was high on my list to visit because of the impact of neocolonialism. I also knew a little bit about the Oyo Empire from one of my Exeter English projects. It was a vast and complex empire before colonization, and aspects of the culture were still prominent across West Africa today. I would also be the first in my family to step back on the African continent. So, in late August, I agreed to visit for two months starting in October. Planning for a two-month stay in a developing country was a big undertaking. This included multiple vaccinations, personal security considerations and proper documentation. At one point, I had to fly down to the Nigerian Consulate in Washington, D.C., to fight for my visa. Due to COVID, Nigeria was accepting only essential travel, and on a case-by-case basis. I would not take no for an answer, and I told them I would not leave the building without a visa. Finally, after months of planning and two rescheduled flights, I boarded a plane for Lagos in mid-October.
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THE PERRIN FELLOWSHIP A BRIDGE YEAR OF SELF-DISCOVERY By Sarah Pruitt ’95 In his 25 years working for the U.S. Information Agency’s Foreign Service, James Perrin ’46 was posted to such far-flung locales as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Chad, Indonesia, the Ivory Coast, Argentina, France and Spain. Before that, he sang on cruise ships traveling from New York to Buenos Aires and studied in Paris on a Fulbright Scholarship. Perrin’s extensive experience traveling and living abroad alongside his wife, Martha Bodel Perrin, inspired the couple to endow a fund at the Academy in 1999 that bears their name. The Perrin Fellowship, later established in 2006, provides a year of independent study and travel for graduating seniors, preferably outside the United States, before they continue their formal studies. According to the Deed of Gift, the fellowship aims to serve as a “Bridge Year” between adolescence and young adulthood, providing each recipient with an “unstructured year of self-exploration and self-reliance,” as well as “extended exposure to unfamiliar cultures that may help to put our own in better perspective.” Perrin, who graduated from Exeter at 16 and went straight to Harvard, reflected in the Deed of Gift that he could have used a bridge year himself. “You get a clearer view of things when there is no pressure about grades or holding onto a scholarship,” he told The Exeter Bulletin several years before his death in 2016. “Personal growth happens when you are free to fail.”
James Perrin ’46
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(clockwise from top) A market I passed through in Lagos on my way up to the university. One of the buildings on the Nigerian university campus. My first meal in Nigeria out of quarantine: amala (pounded yam flour) and ogbono soup (a slippery soup made of African mango seed).
NIGERIA
One of the first monumental shifts in my understanding happened on my first day out of quarantine during a tour of the campus. My tour guide and I were walking along one of the trails in the botanical garden and I asked her if I would be allowed to go on runs there. She looked at me confused, and I explained that I usually jog during the mornings as a form of exercise. She then gave a little laugh and explained, “Here in Nigeria, people do not go on runs. If you have enough food to eat, if you are full, what business do you have going and making yourself hungry again?” That’s when I realized I was in a very different place than I had ever experienced. The incredible professor I worked with shared vast amounts of knowledge and resources about Nigeria. I began to learn basic Yoruba, which was exciting for me as a language enthusiast. I also had the opportunity to attend an interview with the Alaafin (king) of the Yoruba
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people, where he discussed current political and cultural affairs. I learned about the importance of religious and cultural leaders in Nigeria. Even though the Oyo Kingdom no longer controls the government, it has a large amount of political and cultural influence over the people. Cultural leaders are often overlooked, but they are the heart of their people. I also attended development classes during my stay at the university. One of my favorite classes at Exeter was Dr. Russell’s Why Are Poor Nations Poor?, which offers an introduction to development studies. Even though in both classes we learned the same models, the way the Nigerian professor and students analyzed development was completely different. For one thing, the Nigerian students acknowledged problems in developed countries that Nigeria does not have. One student brought up the issue of obesity in the United States. Everyone in the U.S. has a car, while most people in Nigeria walk, they said. The U.S.
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also doesn’t have localized agriculture, so food contains preservatives so it can travel across large distances. This can lead to heart problems, cancer, diabetes and obesity. When the students were imagining a further-developed Nigeria, they were not glorifying countries like the U.S. and treating them as the standard. Instead, they designed their own standard for Nigeria’s future. Overall, my experience in Nigeria was completely unforgettable, but unfortunately, it wasn’t the right time for me to be there. From when I agreed to visit in late August to arriving in mid-October, the civil situation in Nigeria had significantly eroded. Their COVID positive rates were still well below the global average, but terrorist and kidnapping activity in northern Nigeria had increased. Civil unrest was on the rise, and would only grow more violent during my time there, most notably during the EndSARS protests against police brutality. There were multiple unsafe encounters on campus, along with serious political unrest. I had to make the incredibly difficult decision to stay and continue the amazing research I was doing or to leave. It was one of the hardest decisions of my life because if I stayed, I would risk my safety, but if I left, I would destroy the relationship that I had spent the past three months cultivating. This was the first time I had ever experienced true diplomacy. I juggled meetings, emails and speeches with my adviser, the professor, university officials, the fellowship committee and my freaked-out parents. In the end, I decided to leave, and the university decided to cut ties. I no longer had a place to stay, and I had to leave the country in 48 hours due to COVID testing requirements. I was originally not allowed to board the flight due to my last-minute booking. I almost didn’t make it home.
THE CHANGE OF PLANS
That experience was devasting to me for multiple reasons. Not only was it an incredibly traumatic experience, but it was also a destruction of ideals. Every time I had to explain what happened, I was adding to the narrative that developing countries were unsafe, violent and desolate places. As a Black person, who has fought their whole life against the idea that my people are inherently dangerous, I felt like I failed. In all my 18 years, I have always tried to see the good in the world, so it was very hard to lose some of that hope. In retrospect, I do think I was too young, naive and inexperienced to travel to Nigeria alone, especially during a global crisis. I thought my experiences staying with family in the Caribbean and South America would prepare me, but I was wrong. I should have followed the advice of the U.S. government and loved ones and replanned a trip in a more politically stable country.
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Throughout the holidays, I fought a failure mindset. I decided to move out of my bedroom because that was where I’d spent much of the rejection-filled August. I started trauma therapy, which had its positive and negative effects. Omicron arrived and cases skyrocketed globally. Borders closed again, severely limiting where I could travel. But through it all, I was determined to continue this fellowship.
HAWAII
Back in August, many Australian and Polynesian professors had given me contacts at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. UHM prides itself on being the leading Indigenous institution in the U.S. The Hawai‘inuiākea School of Hawaiian Knowledge continues to be the center of modern Hawaiian scholarship. However, I had never truly considered visiting. The Perrin Fellowship is supposed to push my boundaries of travel, and Hawaii, being a U.S. state, always felt too safe. More importantly, I had always found the story of Hawaii to be upsetting. I knew of the illegal overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom by the U.S., the over-tourism problems and the commodification of Hawaiian culture. As someone whose family hails from independent island nations, I had always silently considered Hawaii to still be under colonial rule. Considering the sandy beaches and smiling hula dancers presented in pop culture, it was tremendously depressing. However, after finding all the great academic works that came out of the Hawaiian Sovereignty Movement and the Hawaiian Renaissance, I decided to go. I reached out to Jamaica Heoli Osorio because she is a Stanford alum and kumu (professor) of political science at UHM. I soon found out that she is an award-winning Native Hawaiian poet, activist scholar and an unapologetic Hawaiian nationalist. She graciously let me audit her spring semester Native Hawaiian Politics class. The class focused on the change of governance, culture and land over Hawaii’s history. Kumu Osorio started with the pillars of pre-contact society, such as the importance of genealogy, the Akua (religious pantheon) and societal structure. She then moved through the history of colonization and military occupation, and how it impacts current events like homelessness and public health. Now we’re learning about the legal theories of Indigenous self-governance and land restitution. We’ve read the great academic works of Native Hawaiian scholars such as Trask, Pukui, Kame’eleihiwa, Young, and Osorio, all of whom push the boundaries of political science. Many of the students in the class are Native Hawaiian, so they have a personal stake in not only the history of Hawaii but the future as well. Kumu herself does not pretend to take an objective view of Hawaiian politics.
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(clockwise from top) Much of my time is spent doing traditional research in libraries. Here, I’m reading at the Hawaii Pacific Collections at UHM. My friends and I kayaking on a weekend adventure in Hawaii. My first day as a docent at the Queen Emma Summer Palace. I made the lei in my hair at a community event that morning. The drive up to the Hawaiian and Ethnobotany sections of the Lyon Arboretum. The terrain gets rough so we ride in the back of a 4x4.
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“EVEN THOUGH TIME AND AGAIN I WAS PUSHED BEYOND MY LIMITS, MY DRIVE WAS STRONGER THAN MY FEAR.” She argues that no one is truly objective, and when scholars attempt to be so, they still hold a white, Western, elitist, academic gaze. She’s shown me that my own personal connection to history and to world affairs is an advantage, not a disadvantage. I am not the same scholar walking out of her class that I was walking in. Phillips Exeter alumni also played a huge part in the success of this leg of my trip. Kate Lingley ’89, department chair of Art and Art History at UHM, was another one of my first contacts. She gave me great advice about my trip and connected me with the Honolulu Museum of Art. There I met with Tory Laitila, head curator of Hawaiian Art and Historical Artifacts. We had a great conversation about the role of art and fashion in establishing global recognition of the Hawaiian Kingdom, and how art about Hawaii changed over the 19th and 20th centuries under U.S. rule. I would not be in Hawaii if not for Robert Littman ’61, an award-winning UHM classics professor and archaeologist. Not only did he help me find a place to stay, but he also welcomed me into his Native Hawaiian family. From there I met Liloa Dunn, land manager and ethnobotanist at Lyon Arboretum. He cares for endangered native plants, maintains taro fields, which were the foundation for the pre-contact Hawaiian agriculture system, and creates educational activities for visiting school children. Malama ‘Aina, or caring for the land, is a pillar of Hawaiian culture. As a visitor, I am taking from the land, so I try to give back. I volunteer with Liloa at the arboretum every other week. We are currently working on rebuilding a traditional Hawaiian hale (house) using invasive species of trees, rather than endangered, indigenous ones. Studying Indigenous agricultural and architectural practices through hands-on learning has been a highlight of the year. In March, I began working as a docent at the Queen Emma Summer Palace, a house museum dedicated to the Hawaiian monarchy. I give museum tours and help with community events like lei making, hula dancing and mele (song) performances. At the museum, I explore the idea
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of nationhood: how an Indigenous society gains or loses international recognition. The monarchs Westernized so much about Hawai‘i in order for it to be recognized as a sovereign state by Western nations. It was for a time, but then it too was colonized. An Indigenous society can check all the boxes of the Western standard and still not be independent. These are the exact ideas I set out to explore on this fellowship. Though I originally planned to stay in Hawaii only until the end of March, I decided to extend my stay until the end of May. For one thing, I still have a dozen books to read on my ever-expanding list, and my Hawaiian-language skills are still subpar. I have only just begun working through the Hawaiian Pacific Archives Collection. And at the end of March I was invited to the Lahui Hawai’i Research Conference, where professors, visiting scholars and students present research projects about the theme Mapping Aloha Aina. On the practical side, I got a part-time barista job to pay for all the fun weekend adventures my friends and I are having. My coffee shop is only a block from the beach, so I’m always facing the ocean. For the first time all year, I feel at peace. I wanted to take a gap year because I wanted to push the boundaries of my own education. Whether I become a diplomat, an economist or an international lawyer, I want to enter that field already understanding my own biases having grown up in the West. My goal for this year was to reexamine my own understanding of the world and the way it should work. If I’m going to be working with developing countries or countries with histories of colonization, it’s not enough to learn at institutions in developed colonizer countries. No matter how much Googling I do, or how many TED Talks I listen to, the knowledge will be the most authentic at its source. Even though time and again I was pushed beyond my limits, my drive was stronger than my fear. Through all the ups and downs, I took a year to figure out what type of global citizen I want to be. I found that. E
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Archaeological consultant Hunter Stetz in the Academy Woodlands. 4 4 • T H E
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H I S T O RY ON THE EDGE OF THE WOODS HOW AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL FIND COULD LINK STUDENTS TO E X E T E R ’S R E VO LU T I O N A RY PA ST By Patrick Garrity
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unter Stetz squats beside a deep mud puddle in the woods, a small trowel in his hand. He sinks the trowel into the fallen leaves surrounding the hole. The tool halts with a clink. “This might have been a chimney base,” he says. He points to other spots around the perimeter of the soggy depression near a trailhead in the Academy Woodlands. “I think this was a cellar hole.” A story is unfolding at the edge of the woods, a story originally told 240 years ago and now coming to light. Depending on where the tale leads, it could connect the Academy to one of the American Revolution’s most tragic heroes and offer its students the chance to study early Black American history in their own backyard. That’s because the cellar hole Stetz believes he has found might have belonged to Jude Hall. Hall was an enslaved man who fought on the colonists’ side in exchange for his freedom. He settled in Exeter in 1783 after the war, and legend has long held that he lived with his
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family near a small pond next to what became Drinkwater Road. The pond today is even named Jude’s Pond. But no house remains, and the exact location of the homestead has never been determined. Stetz, a Hampton Falls, New Hampshire, native and a field technician for a local archaeological consultant, became intrigued with Hall’s story — and the murkiness about the home’s location — a year ago. That curiosity led him to his discovery last fall, and he notified Warren Biggins, the Academy’s manager of sustainability and natural resources. “For me, the Academy Woodlands have always seemed an ideal version of a living laboratory, and one that offers our students incredible opportunities for experiential learning across a wide variety of academic disciplines,” Biggins says. “I’m extremely excited for the potential projects and collaborations that may result from this discovery.”
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Adds History Instructor Troy Samuels, a trained archaeologist: “For our curriculum, I do not think I am exaggerating when I say this offers truly transformative opportunities to expand who and what Exeter history courses discuss. … This offers a new thread for students to latch on to. In Jude Hall’s story, we are a different version of what it means to be American, to be a New Hampshirite, to be from Exeter.”
WHO WAS JUDE HALL?
Hall was born in the late 1740s. Enslaved first to the Philemon Blake family of Kensington, Hall was sold to an Exeter resident named Nathaniel Healy shortly before the start of the Revolutionary War. Slavery was legal if uncommon in the region; Exeter Historical Society records show that 38 enslaved people were among the town’s 1,741 inhabitants in 1775. How Hall came to enlist and fight for the colonists’ cause is not entirely clear. In his book Patriots of Color, George Quintal Jr. writes, “Soon after being sold to Healy, Hall ran away from his new master. When the war broke out, he enlisted and fought on the Colonial side.” Other reports theorize that Hall may have been Healy’s proxy, fighting in his enslaver’s place in exchange for his freedom. According to a National Park Service account, Hall enlisted on May 10, 1775 — just weeks after “the shot heard ’round the world” at Lexington and Concord. A month into his service, Hall became one of more than a hundred Black and Native American soldiers to fight in the Battle of Bunker Hill, where he narrowly missed being struck by a British cannonball. His legend, told in The History of Kensington, NH, 1663 to 1945, is that of an outstanding soldier and a mighty figure who “could lift a barrel of cider and drink from the [tap].” Hall would serve in various Continental Army units throughout the war. While applying for a military pension in 1818, Hall testified that he reenlisted in 1776 and 1779 and served “until the peace and then was discharged.” Records show he signed for military pay several times over the eight years, and he fought in some of the most famous battles of the war, including Ticonderoga and Saratoga. In the Battle of Monmouth in June 1778, Hall is said to have earned his nickname “Old Rock” while serving under George Washington and Alexander Hamilton.
Hall returned to Exeter in 1783 — the year PEA opened its doors to its inaugural class. Now a free man, he married Rhoda Paul, a member of one of New Hampshire’s prominent free Black families, and by all accounts they settled beside a small pond near the Exeter-Kensington town line to farm and raise a large family. Were his story to end there, Jude Hall would likely be a mostly forgotten figure of early America. But his tale turns tragic. Three of the Halls’ four sons — born free — were abducted and sold into bondage. From the National Park Service, citing an 1833 affidavit by the Halls’ son-inlaw Robert Roberts: In 1807, their son Aaron was kidnapped in Rhode Island, “sent to sea, and has not been heard of since.” Six years later, David Wedgewood of Exeter claimed their 18-year-old son James Hall owed Wedgewood four dollars. Wedgewood had James “tied and carried to Newburyport jail, and the next morning … put on board a vessel bound for New Orleans, and sold as a slave.” At an unknown date the Halls’ son William “went to sea. ... After arriving in the West Indies, [William] was sold there as a slave.” William Hall would ultimately escape after 10 years and flee to England. Aaron and James most likely died as captives. Jude Hall would never see or hear from his three oldest sons again. He died on Aug. 22, 1827, and was buried in Exeter. Rhoda Hall moved to Maine after his death, leaving behind the house next to the pond.
“ T H I S O F F E R S T RU LY T R A N S F O R M AT I V E O P P O RT U N I T I E S T O E X PA N D W H O A N D W H AT E X E T E R H I S T O RY C O U R S E S D I S C U S S .”
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HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT
Today, that pond — formally catalogued by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names as “Judes Pond” — is part of the 836-acre Academy Woodlands. Over decades, the Academy acquired land straddling the Exeter River that comprises the woodlands. Most of the tract that includes the pond was received as a gift to the school in 1910. The pond sits along Drinkwater Road near an entrance to a trail network that crisscrosses the woods. The “one-story, two-room house” Hall reported owning while applying for the military pension is gone, however. Whether it was demolished, fell down or burned to the ground, the house is lost to history. That’s where Stetz comes in. He took an active interest in finding the location of the homestead after his firm, Independent Archaeological Consulting, in Dover, New Hampshire, was unable to determine its location
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CHRISTIAN HARRISON
Barbara Rimkunas, curator of the Exeter Historical Society, leafs through records noting Jude Hall’s signature and an 1802 map of Exeter.
while working on a project at the Blake Family farm in Kensington. “I basically took it as a challenge,” Stetz says. Stetz combed the area around the pond on foot looking for any evidence of human use on the landscape. He made use of LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) maps of the region that reveal what the ground surface looks like underneath vegetation. “Stone walls are a great example of things that are evident on LiDAR,” he says. “I looked for irregular depressions and checked out a few I saw on the map, but the only location that was promising just happened to be the first depression I encountered.” He zeroed in on a sunken spot in the land near Drinkwater Road and the pond. What set apart this location from other candidates around the pond, Stetz says, is the presence of large stones surrounding the depression. “There are a few stones visible above all
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the dead leaves and pine needles that accumulate and decompose every year, but I stuck a thin metal rod in the ground in various places and found that there were more stones beneath the ground surface that made a rectangular shape and that there were hardly any stones within or outside of the rectangle.” Stetz estimates the rectangle to be approximately 15 feet by 18 feet. Barbara Rimkunas, curator of the Exeter Historical Society, said there are no known records showing Hall owned a house or land in Exeter. An 1802 map of Exeter shows an unnamed road that was to become Drinkwater Road, with a few homes identified along its path. None belongs to Hall. But an 1822 murder trial offers clues as to the location of his house. Hall was called as a witness in the trial of John Blaisdell, accused of the fatal assault of John Wadleigh. His testimony, published in pamphlet
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Hunter Stetz and Warren Biggins, the Academy’s manager of sustainability and natural resources, at the possible site of Jude Hall’s homestead.
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form, reveals where the Hall home was in relation to some noted landmarks: “Between 8 and 9 on the evening of [February] 18th, somebody knocked at my door. My house is near the Exeter line and about a mile and a quarter from Folsom’s. Told my children to open the door. Blaisdell came in and appeared frightened, and asked where the Captain was, (meaning me). He said, he wanted me to help lead Wadleigh in, that he was drunk and had been fighting with a sleigh. … Wadleigh’s house is between the Cove bridge and mine, about 30 rods from mine. I heard heavy groans, found the deceased, lying on his side. I lifted Wadleigh up and led him home — he appeared to shudder with cold. I got a fire which he seemed to need. … Blaisdell went away and wanted me to go home with him — I said don’t go, and Blaisdell said he must go to take care of his cattle. Wadleigh died about three quarters of an hour before day — I was with him at that time. Blaisdell’s house is in Kensington about a half a mile from my house.” The 1802 map locates “Cove Bridge” along the road and “Folsom’s Tavern” at the corner of what today is Drinkwater and Hampton roads. Hall testified that “my house is near the Exeter line and about a mile and a quarter from Folsom’s.” The pond is in fact 1.2 miles from
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the Drinkwater-Hampton junction and approximately two-tenths of a mile from the Exeter-Kensington town line. The trial testimony may be the best evidence and only documentation that Hall did in fact live at this location.
IS THIS THE PLACE?
Today the site offers no obvious clues — and little else of note to the amateur observer. White pines tower overhead, and smaller trees partially obscure the site from the trail. One could appreciate how a hundred years’ worth of visitors to the woods passed by without noticing. Determining if Stetz’s discovery has historic value ultimately will require some digging. “I think the first step is to do some minimally invasive investigation of the area to get a sense of what we have in terms of remains,” says Samuels, the Exeter history teacher. “Once we have a general picture, I think the next steps would be excavation, working, of course, with local and regional interested groups as well as our students to tease out as much detail about the archaeological remains as possible.” The discovery of bricks, ceramic shards, glass and nails all could offer clues that a house once stood on the site. Dating such artifacts would further pinpoint a domicile’s vintage. Sometimes, you even get lucky. “I know one
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homestead in which they found the initials of the suspected homeowner on a piece of bottle glass,” Stetz says. “There are all sorts of fun techniques we could show our students and use to get as holistic a picture of what took place at the site as possible,” Samuels says. “Will any of this definitively show that this was Jude Hall’s homestead? Probably not — that type of definitive information is
“YOU FORM A DIFFERENT R E L AT I O N S H I P WITH THE PA S T W H E N YOU A R E T O U C H I N G I T.” rare even in historic archaeology — but the more complete the picture, the more sound our hypotheses can be.” Even the possibility that the site has historic significance is exhilarating for Samuels. The digging for history is nearly as important as its discovery. “Archaeology offers historical teaching a certain vitality; you form a different relationship with the past when you are touching it than when you are simply reading about it,” Samuels says. “I am so eager to give our students that experience, to let them actively recover history, and especially the histories of groups who have not been given a leading role in the drama that is the history of America. … The opportunity to excavate and write the material history of such a fascinating and important person as Jude Hall — and to bring students along for the ride — is kind of the archaeological dream.” E
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W H O WA S M O S E S URIAH HALL? The scourge of slavery stole three sons from Jude Hall, but he and his youngest son, George, left a legacy that is interwoven with the Academy’s. George Washington Hall was born free in 1789, one of 10 children of Jude and Rhoda Hall. His older brothers William, Aaron and James would eventually be abducted and sold into slavery. George survived and remained in Exeter after his father died and his mother moved away. He married, and with his wife raised eight children. The family lived in poverty, but the town helped to support them through a charity established to assist people of color. That generosity would help lead to a historic first. In 1858, Moses Uriah Hall, one of George Hall’s sons and Jude Hall’s grandsons, entered Phillips Exeter Academy as the first Black student to attend the school. According to an essay by David Dixon, published in the periodical Historical New Hampshire: “In winter, presumably to help support himself, [Moses Hall] drove a sleigh borrowed from Dr. Henry French, carried his white classmates to the academy, returned the vehicle to its owner, and then walked back to the school.” Like his grandfather, Moses Hall eventually went to war, serving as a soldier in the Union Army during the Civil War. After the war, Moses Hall returned to New Hampshire and settled in Epping. He married Eliza Healey and worked for decades as a skilled stonemason. In her book Tales from Epping’s Past, historian Madelyn Williamson writes of the mark Hall made on the small town: “In 1915, when he was about 80 years old, Mr. Hall paved the sidewalks on Pleasant Street. Before that, he had built a wall on Prescott Road and set the foundation for a large shoe factory in Raymond, as well as for a new one here in town. He bricked up buildings, and set walkways, stairs, fireplaces and chimneys all over town. ... In 1917, as our town’s oldest citizen, Moses Uriah Hall became the fifth recipient of our Boston Post Cane and the first African American to be so honored by Epping. Mr. Hall died at well over 90 years of age. No doubt buried with military honors, this old Civil War veteran rests from a life well lived that would have made his father and his grandfather very proud indeed.” Moses Hall’s gravestone in Epping, New Hampshire
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CONNECTIONS
News and notes from the alumni community
MAXINE WEED
PHOTOGRAPH BY MAXINE WEED
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Come Back Home By Alexanderia Baker Haidara ’99
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very afternoon, I rushed to the library,
working tirelessly on my senior project, “Our Voices: The African American experience at Phillips Exeter Academy,” a brochure to specifically attract prospective Black students. Dean Russell Weatherspoon was my adviser at the time. The Exeter archives became my peaceful place on campus. After discovering Exeter’s Black hidden figures, I felt like I belonged here. If I had known that Exeter had admitted African American students 139 years before my arrival, I would have walked around campus with more confidence and purpose. Maybe I would not have felt intimidated in class. Moses Uriah Hall, the first Black student at Exeter, entered the Academy in 1858, five years before the Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves. Young Moses could have been kidnapped and sold into slavery like his uncles at any moment. The Academy soon admitted more Black students, furthering its commitment to attract “youth from every quarter.” Henry C. Minton, class of 1891, hailed from South Carolina. He was editor of The Exonian newspaper and later became a medical doctor, at a time when Black Americans had been free for only 26 years. How inspiring it would have been to have known that Booker T. Washington Jr., the son of civil rights icon Booker T. Washington, had attended the Academy in 1907. In late spring of my senior year, Exeter’s campus was flooded with alumni from the class of 1979. I stood in awe watching them admire the new buildings and reconnect with their past. However, I was disappointed to see so few Black alumni in attendance and made a promise to myself to stay connected to the Academy. My research indicated that there were Black
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students in the class of 1979 and definitely in the 1980s. Why weren’t they attending their class reunions? From my conversations with many Black alumni and students, I found that Exeter had simply been traumatic for them. An opportunity that was supposed to help give Black students a full-court advantage in achieving the American dream instead left them with deep racial wounds that would take years to heal. Unfortunately, I was a victim of racism. One cold, wintry night a man in his truck drove by Main Street and shouted the N-word at me. While the principal apologized and tried to address the problem, I was still in shock. I could not run or cry to my mom in my dorm room for love and reassurance. Dealing with racism is just too much for a teenager to endure. Nevertheless, Exeter is still an embedded part of my childhood, and luckily, I have more happy memories than tragic ones. Going to Friday night dances at the Afro, attending the Annual Soul Food Dinner and dancing the night away on a cruise line for prom were unforgettable. Since graduation, I have attended class reunions and volunteered on the Admissions team. On many occasions, I have returned to campus unannounced, but my former teachers cleared their schedules because I was in town. On the pathways, students greeted me with their warm smiles and waves of hello. After all, I stand on the shoulders of 164 years of Black alumni who came before me. I know that for my fellow Black Exonians, returning to campus is complicated. Exeter must rebuild relations with its Black alumni, students and faculty members. I would encourage the Academy to do more to heal the relationship. It is time for us to strive to truly make the Academy a welcoming place for “youth from every quarter.” E
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Food for Thought By Sarah Zobel as “the poorest and highest-crime neighborhood in Canton.” We caught up with him to hear more about what drives his non sibi work. How did you come to be charged with opening a grocery store at age 22?
I interviewed with the StarkFresh executive director and said I’m a space-oriented person and want to see something through to fruition, and he handed me the reins to this project. I started ripping out carpet the day I was hired. I did wiring and lights; I painted with friends. I had the ceiling tiles — which are stickers — printed by the McKinley Museum. I chose the point-of-sale system and applied to accept SNAP EBT. We did everything ourselves, and I’m so proud of us. It was an absolute labor of love.
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What have you learned about yourself through your work? t age 5, Miles Hoover ’15 boldly
announced his career plan: to “be everything.” He imagined a life “trying a different thing every day,” he says. And while his experiential outlook remains, he finds fulfillment today in focusing on a singular passion — food justice. After graduating from Kenyon College with a degree in anthropology, Hoover moved back to his hometown of Canton, Ohio. Looking to make positive change at the local level, he took a post with AmeriCorps VISTA to spearhead the opening of a StarkFresh grocery store on Canton’s northeast side, a so-called food desert, in the middle of the pandemic. The store’s mission: to provide the community with locally sourced, nutrient-dense and affordable food options. Currently, Hoover juggles two food-centric jobs and volunteers as a de facto consultant for Canton for All People as that nonprofit makes plans to open a grocery store in Shorb, an area Hoover describes
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I’ve always been academic, but I have ADHD that was undiagnosed through college. When I started ripping up carpet and wiring lights, lifting watermelons, running the grill — doing all this hands-on work — I found that I could go to work every day and feel good. I finally decided to take a deep breath and say, it’s OK if I don’t have an “email job.” You were an anthropology major (with English and chemistry minors). How does that play into your interest with food?
I’ve always been passionate about food and food justice. I did research around local food systems at Kenyon using photovoice, which was the most enriching thing I’d ever done. Recently, I brought photos I took of the [Shorb] neighborhood to a Canton for All People barbecue and invited community members to provide qualitative feedback. I’m excited to do more of that kind of work. It’s a way of looking at the world, of wanting to understand how the people who live closest to the problem see the problem. E
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Anderson (on floor) recording Koro Aka in Arunachal Pradesh, India.
Speaking For the World By Juliet Eastland ’86
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t was a humid, pre-pandemic day in the remote Sepik River area of Papua, New Guinea. Linguist Gregory Anderson ’85 was sitting with a local man, quizzing him about his language. The two were sharing a snack of live grubs. “Gooey and bland,” Anderson recalls. “Not that bad, but kind of weird.” In fact, not that weird for Anderson, whose passion for identifying and preserving endangered languages has led to many memorable meals around the world. As the founder of the nonprofit Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages, he visits areas with poor language documentation to meet local decision-makers, interview community members, and offer training in writing systems and digital media. Over the years, he and team members have helicoptered to Siberian hinterlands and camped in Indian backyards. He’s interviewed Native American Oregonians and recorded Nigerian villagers, amid revving motorbikes and bleating goats. In areas without plumbing, he’s gathered water from streams. Interactions happen everywhere, from spontaneous meetings to how-to demonstrations to religious ceremonies. “Once people understand, ‘Wow, this person is actually interested in learning our language,’ they’re usually quite receptive,” he says. These cross-cultural immersions amplify Anderson’s lifelong joy in learning languages and parsing their systems. After taking courses in all five languages offered at Exeter, he entered Harvard University, where, 15 minutes into his first linguistics class, he realized, “This is who I am.” He ultimately earned a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, specializing in languages of Siberia and tribal languages of India. As part of his goal “to ensure language survival for generations to come,” Anderson publishes “Living Dictionaries,” collaborative, infinitely expandable, free online compendia combining written data with speakers’ audio recordings, in languages from Achi (Guatemala) to Хызыл (Republic of Khakassia, Siberia). He encourages users to contribute to his and to create their own. In this context, he says, “Your expertise as a native speaker is profound and vastly superior to any outside scholar’s.” He laments the “global language extinction crisis,”
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DR. K. DAVID HARRISON
G R E G O RY A N D E R S O N ’8 5
whereby dominant languages (English, Russian, Spanish, Standard Chinese) rapidly supplant minority ones. Within 100 years, he estimates, nearly half of the world’s languages could vanish. The loss would be momentous. Studies show that bilingual graduates of K-12 immersion schools generally emerge with higher graduation rates and average salaries, and lower rates of incarceration and substance use, than their monolingual counterparts. In one study, bilingual Canadians showed an average 4.5-year delayed onset of dementia compared to monolinguals. Since language spread typically accompanies economic power, dominant-language mastery often reflects education level and socioeconomic opportunities. “Because people who use the more divergent-from-the-standard form [of language] are devalued, so too is their language variety devalued,” Anderson says. Inspired by conservationists’ “biodiversity hotspot” maps, Anderson maps “language hotspots” — areas with low language-documentation levels, high language endangerment, and high linguistic diversity (referring not to number of individual languages, but to “language families,” aka “genetic units” — language groups descended from a common forebearer. Romance languages, all descended from Latin, constitute a language family.). To date, his map has yielded 20-plus global hotspots, collectively containing 85% to 95% of the world’s genetic units. Ultimately, Anderson says, preserving language means preserving human cultural diversity. He admires India’s Ho speakers for their “elaborate way of expressing noteworthy or interesting features of people,” with words for “walking with a dragging limp” and “talking while spitting through one’s teeth,” for example. “To waddle along on short legs (like a duck or a fat child)” is tapa.tupu. The word has a pithy beauty, doesn’t it? The world would be a poorer place without it. E
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Animating Support By Debbie Kane
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rant Moran ’74 exudes enthusiasm, humor and grace — qualities that have made him a respected writer and producer of children’s and family content for 30-plus years. Known for his contributions to animated shows such as “Rugrats,” “Jimmy Neutron,” and “Guardians of the Galaxy,” the Emmy Award-winner has earned accolades and respect from his peers. But it’s his role as founder and president of Kids Entertainment Professionals for Young Refugees (KEPYR) that has been, he says, most rewarding. In 2015, Moran was deeply moved by the tragic stories of Syrian children escaping that country’s civil war. A self-professed “softy” when it comes to kids, Moran says, “Until then, I had no idea the crisis of displaced children was so huge — over 38 million children worldwide have been forced to flee their homes, the highest number since WWII.” Eager to do something tangible, he looked for a kids media industry-based charity focused on refugee children to support. “And it turned out there wasn’t one,” he says. “I was shocked. I figured it was up to me [to create one]. It was a classic ‘put up or shut up’ moment.” He founded KEPYR in partnership with UNICEF to rally his industry to support young refugees around the world. The grassroots organization has raised nearly $300,000 to date, including $20,000 in one week from an emergency appeal in March, created in response to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.
EXETER FOUNDATIONS
Moran’s non sibi ethos was shaped, in part, by his Exeter experience. One of four Morans to attend the Academy — his late father, Bill ’40, and brothers Reed ’69 and Richard ’71 are also alumni — Moran quips that he was “the least qualified” in his family to be an Exonian. Unprepared for Exeter’s rigor, he found his emotional footing and friendships in the school’s drama program; Fisher Theater was his safe space. “I spent my life there,” he says. “I think that was partially a function of my unhappiness. Exeter was a struggle for me.” In addition to acting, writing and directing (including his own plays), Moran was president
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of DRAMAT. Exeter’s writing program helped him strengthen his own work, as did the listening skills he developed around the Harkness table. After receiving bachelor’s degrees in drama and philosophy from Dartmouth College, Moran returned to Exeter as a teaching intern in the Theater Department. “I wanted to be a warm presence on campus because I understood how the school could be difficult for some students,” he says. “I also knew instinctively that high school students will give you amazing performances if you inspire them and you know how to speak to them as a director. They’ll take inspiring risks.” He became a dramaturg at Portsmouth’s Theatre-by-the-Sea, a behind-the-scenes role supporting play development and an experience that led him to a graduate program at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.
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EARLY CAREER
Moran worked in professional theater as a director and dramaturg for a decade before transitioning to screenwriting. He co-wrote scripts with his brother Reed, an author and successful television screenwriter. In the early 1990s, a spec script he wrote for “The Wonder Years” television series, based on a seriocomic childhood incident with his brother Reed, turned into an opportunity to write and produce animated programs for Warner Bros. Animation. A lifelong fan of “Bugs Bunny” and other classic Warner Bros. cartoons, Moran was thrilled. His first project was collaborating with Warner Bros. and with Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment on “Tiny Toon Adventures.” “It was a wonderful time to be in animation, a real renaissance period,” Moran says. “Suddenly, with no background in the field at all, I found myself working on high-profile programs with the most talented people in the business.” His work with Warner Bros. led to projects with nearly every major animation studio producing children’s programming, including Nickelodeon and Marvel Entertainment. While at Nickelodeon, Moran was head writer and co-producer of “Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius.” Under the auspices of Global Monster Media, his creative consultancy, Moran has produced, developed or written such shows as “The Wild Thornberries,” “Marvel’s Spider-Man” and “WordGirl,” a PBS KIDS show that earned him a writing Emmy in 2015. He even helped iconic Barbie make her animated series debut, developing and serving as head writer on “Barbie Dreamhouse Adventures” for Mattel Television. “I’m particularly proud of that one, believe it or not,” he says. “Our team played a key role in the character’s recent evolution as a contemporary empowering icon for young girls.”
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more and more people have stepped up to help. “We’ve drawn support from across the kids media industry, from games and comics to animated television, publishing and feature films.” In 2021, the organization was honored with the President’s Volunteer Service Award for “dedicated service to children around the world.”
“Our team played a key role in [Barbie’s] recent evolution as a contemporary empowering icon for young girls.”
KEPYR, however, is perhaps Moran’s most important passion project. He draws on his extensive network of children’s programming professionals — from artists to executives — to support the nonprofit’s work and highlight the world’s ongoing refugee and migrant children crisis, efforts that took on new urgency with the RussianUkrainian conflict (over 1 million children fled Ukraine in March alone). All of the money KEPYR raises — through online fundraisers, live events and special appeals — supports UNICEF’s refugee relief efforts. As KEPYR became more visible, thanks in part to social media outreach and Moran’s participation in industry events,
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A graphic for Moran’s refugee support nonprofit, KEPYR
In a sense, Moran’s career has come full circle: thousands of people in the industry he loves support a cause benefiting its young audiences. “Children’s entertainment found me and I didn’t want to let it go,” he says. “I’ve learned from my years working among them that the people drawn to the children’s entertainment field tend to cherish childhood. I felt confident that once they knew what I’d come to know about the refugee crisis they’d be moved as I am and be motivated to act. And that faith’s been borne out.” E
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From Every Quarter Exeter’s community of alumni remained connected, gathering together online from points across North America and around the world. Exonians showed up with enthusiasm and ingenuity to help make events meaningful, educational and inclusive.
Making the Dorm Connection The Academy’s celebration of the 50th anniversary of coeducation inspired a string of dorm-based Zoom calls this year for the First Exeter Women, or FEW, a self-created group of women from classes 1972 through 1978. “It was meaningful to reconnect with friends across classes,” says organizer Vicky Thomas ’74. “So much of the depth of the Exeter experience happened for us in the dorms. Dorm life was our refuge and solace from the pressures of always being on display.”
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Challenging the World
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Sam Perkins ’71 and Roland Merullo ’71 came up with the creative idea to have class discussions that reflected on the past 51 years. Dan Hunter ’71 was the host and had this to say about the lively talks: “We were eclectic, opinionated and rebellious. Little has changed. We are still distinctive and passionate — each with our own view of how to challenge the world, from the scholarly science of Rick Allmendinger ’71 to the rock and blues of Benmont Tench ’71
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to the deeply moving discussions of racism by Kip Davis ’71 and Cory Laws ’71 to the loving spirit of Susan Ruel ’71. Even after the myriad paths we have taken, we still have a commitment to our friends — seeing each other again, acknowledging our difficulties, our pain and our successes.”
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Focused Discussion
Asking the Big Questions While one group of 1961 classmates compared the features of Harkness and Zoom, another explored a “big question” of common interest. “Sixty years have passed since the Academy launched us into the world under the banner of non sibi,” Jack Russell ’61 says. “‘Are the prospects for humankind better or worse than in 1961?’ We enjoyed 90 mostly optimistic minutes together and a second group did the same.”
George Bain ’69 and David Underhill ’69 curated some focused gatherings for their class meetings after several early “gabfests” were well received. The topics ranged from an effort to create a sustainable fishery for scallops on the New England coast, led by John Williamson ’69; lessons learned from the American withdrawal from Afghanistan, led by retired Ambassador Peter Galbraith ’69 and retired Army General Richard Rowe ’69; and retreats to the holy isle of Iona, led by church organist Bill McCorkle ’69.
READING TOGETHER Despite the interruption of standing in line for a COVID test during the meeting, Alexander Lee ’93 offered his thoughts on a lively class book group. “We picked a book, How to Educate a Citizen, by E.D. Hirsch, that elicited strong opinions, making some wonder if its highly recognized, nonagenarian author had set foot in a classroom in the past couple decades.”
FILM SCREENING At the urging of his classmates, videographer Mark Woodcock ’61 shared his private Iranian travelogue, captured during a group tour in 2015, with his class for a virtual reunion event. “The result was a virtual screening followed by a two-hour discussion of the film, whose aim was to convey something of the cultural heritage and complexity of that country to Americans, at a time of tense relations between our countries,” Woodcock says. “There is nothing more gratifying than sharing a work with a group of one’s peers, whose appreciation — both of the film and why I wanted to make it — was enriched by our years at Exeter.”
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HONORING TRADITION Last spring an important reunion tradition was upheld with a bit of assistance from staff and technology as the class of 1950 met with Evan Gonzalez ’22, the recipient of the William G. Saltonstall Scholarship. “Evan shared his Exeter experience with our class and helped connect us to a school very different from the Exeter of 1950,” Dave Baker says. “Exeter has been a truly life-changing experience for him.”
UPCOMING EXETER EVENTS In addition to virtual engagement opportunities, Exeter is also returning to in-person events and receptions. Check out www.exeter.edu/alumnievents for a list of all upcoming events.
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How to Learn a Language By Kaylee Chen ’23
LAUREN CROW
lesson 1: fly to a country you do not dare to call your own. taste the words that flow off the tongues of your relatives, and when you spit them out, a jam of syllables and accents, watch for the lemon-sour purse of their lips. can you feel your misshapen gratitude when your grandmother hands you a gift, a souvenir? remind yourself that your time here is temporary. lesson 2: tolerate a thousand stilted video call conversations with your grandmother, realize you are looking for an escape between every sentence, hiss when your mother grips you tighter. you will whisper how do you say this in chinese? and the phone will say connectivity issues and while she answers your grandmother’s face will be frozen in a smile. lesson 3: hear the arguments flare when they think you’re asleep and let them fester in your memory when you lie awake. remember, cancer is equally devastating in all languages. remember, hospital bills are expensive in every country. remember, your grandmother has curly hair, soft between your fingertips. remember, you must pronounce her name correctly when you start praying. lesson 4: do not learn, and do not recognize the tears that flow when your grandmother dies the way your stiff syllables always did-slow, painful, withering away into ash and air. bite down on your mutinous tongue, let the blood rise sharp and hot in your mouth, feel a fraction of the pain she must have, count how many times you told her i love you and know that no matter how much you practice saying it now it can no longer be enough. lesson 5: listen to the things your mother whispers on her knees, the musk of incense seeping into the floorboards. do you recognize what rots in the space between her sentences, the crevices of her cries, the way every word trembles with regret? speak in those lagging video calls with a grandfather you are determined to call your own, let the words fall flat and pick up their remnants, because at least you are trying, and maybe this time it is enough to say . i love you. know that this is worth all the misshapen words in the world. E Kaylee Chen ’23 received the American Voices Medal, one of the highest writing honors awarded in the 2022 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards competition, for this poem.
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In the middle of the American Revolution, John and Elizabeth Phillips started a revolution of their own. They believed in the future of our new country, and in the potential of those who would someday lead it. Their bequest helped a fledgling Academy prosper. What will be the legacy of your estate plan?
Many Exonians choose to put Exeter in their wills. Our Planned Giving Office will help you and your advisers as you consider a lasting gift to PEA. Please contact Phil Perham at 603-777-3594 or pperham@exeter.edu.
PHILLIPS EXETER ACADEMY 20 Main Street Exeter, NH 03833-2460
Parents of Alumni: If this magazine is addressed to an Exonian who no longer maintains a permanent address at your home, please email us (records@exeter.edu) with their new address. Thank you.
Alumni Awards Each year, the Academy honors individuals whose selfless work and generosity of spirit reflect the ideals of goodness and knowledge united. We invite you to nominate members within our community whose accomplishments are most deserving of special recognition.
John and Elizabeth Phillips Award Bestowed upon an alumna or alumnus for their outstanding contribution to the welfare of community, country or humanity, beyond any volunteer service to the Academy.
Founders’ Day Award Presented to an alumnus or alumna, retired faculty or staff member, a parent or a friend of Exeter, in recognition of exceptional service to the Academy.
President’s Award Given to an alumna or alumnus volunteer who has made outstanding contributions to promoting the activities and goals of the Academy within the past two years.
Submit nominations at exeter.edu/alumniawards Questions? Email awards@exeter.edu
