I Belong

AFFI NITY AND IDENTITY GROUPS HAVE SUPPORTED STUDENTS FOR DECADES. NOW ALUMNI CAN BENEFIT, TOO.

B y Sandra Guzmán

Illustrations By Kim Salt

Two decades after her graduation from Exeter, Rhoda Tamakloe ’01 still prizes her Afro-Latinx Exonian Society T-shirt collection. Being a member of ALES played an important role in her days as a student coming of age at the Academy in the late ’90s. “It was the first time in my life that I was able to find community and people who shared my background,” says Tamakloe, whose father is Nigerian and Ghanaian and whose mother is African American and of Indigenous descent from the Narragansett and Wampanoag of Rhode Island and Massachusetts. “It helped me step into my own.” Tamakloe cherishes her three years at Exeter, but she acknowledges that she struggled with being seen as a learning prop instead of a peer in certain instances. One unforgettable moment during a history class stands out. “I remember the lights went off and a video came on; it was that scene in Amistad where they are drowning the slaves,” she recalls. “Then the lights came on and the teacher said, ‘Rhoda, how do you feel about this?’ I said, ‘Well, I don’t know, I was never a slave. How do you feel about it?’”

The incident left her confused, hurt and unclear as to what more her 15-year-old self could have added about the murder of human beings by despotic slavers. She was grateful, however, that later that day she could count on classmates in ALES to help her process what happened. “Without that support, I would have carried and swallowed what happened,” she says.

During her senior year, she adds, she found support in the classroom as well. Black Experience in White America, a course taught by Russell Weatherspoon ’01, ’03, ’08, ’11 (Hon.); P’92, P’95, P’97, P’01, she says, provided an additional safe space to explore the intersection of class and race with her peers.

Celebrate ALES!

Join us on campus October 28-29 to commemorate 55 years of the AfroLatinx Exonian Society. All are welcome. More information to come!

Now as an elected General Alumni Association (GAA) director and chair of the GAA Alumni Affinity Engagement Committee, Tamakloe is leading efforts to curate identity and affinity spaces like ALES for Exeter alumni. Her focus is on intersectionality.

“I am working to create sustainable, accessible pathways for Exonians to connect with each other and continue to reimagine how we can work together to leave this world a little better than we found it, which is at the heart of the school’s non sibi philosophy,” she says.

ON-CAMPUS AFFINITY SPACES

In educational settings, affinity spaces are meant to create a sense of belonging so students feel affirmed and encouraged and, most important, they can exist freely without the oppressive gaze that regards them as “others.”

In predominantly white and heteronormative environments, people who are differently abled, LGBTQ+ and from various racial and ethnic backgrounds can often feel invisible and stressed, even if the behavior toward them is unintentional.

“Affinity spaces provide opportunities for people to find cultural reflections and affirmation,” says Stephanie Bramlett, the Academy’s director of Equity and Inclusion. “They are a well-documented key ingredient in how we foster connection and belonging for all at Exeter.”

Bramlett says the Office of Multicultural Affairs currently sponsors two types of identity-based groups: cultural groups and affinity groups. Since these groups are student-driven efforts, numbers fluctuate from year to year. Of this year’s 30 groups, 10 are affinity groups.

Bramlett says that cultural group members come together to learn about and celebrate a particular social or cultural group. They are open to anyone who wants to be in community with others discussing a topic around a particular culture. Examples include ALES, the Exeter Feminist Union and the Gender and Sexuality Alliance.

By comparison, Bramlett says, affinity group members come together because they have a shared social identity and can speak to the unique experience of being a member of the group. “You know you are in the right affinity group,” she explains, if you can “speak to that group’s collective cultural identity and experience from the ‘I’ and ‘we’ perspective.” Examples include La Alianza Latina, Exonians With Disabilities and Different Abilities, and the Association of Low-Income Exonians.

“At the Academy, affinity groups play an integral part in the student experience,” says Associate Dean of Multicultural Affairs Hadley Camilus. “Being in a familiar space with other students who share a particular salient identity is paramount, for some, to being able to thrive here. We don’t prescribe that. The students get a sense of when they need to be around those who feel familiar. It’s important for students to know that others are having similar experiences here, and to learn how to be authentic in a community that doesn’t always allow for that, from their more seasoned peers.”

Academic literature supports the power of affinity groups to increase self-esteem and achievement, and improve mental well-being. Beverly Daniel Tatum, one of the leading authorities on the complexity of identity, says affinity spaces help young people in identity development. In her book Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?, Tatum writes that if you are growing up as a young person of color in society, part of that experience is to get messages from the wider world about who you are, and responding to them. Tatum, who is also the interim president of Mount Holyoke College and president emerita of Spelman College, says that teenagers start to think about questions of identity in ways that lead them to seek out people who are having similar experiences. It should surprise no one to see young people, particularly in adolescence, gathering in similar groups, she writes. And it’s not just Black children. Asian, Latinx, Native American and white youths do this as well.

Bringing Alumni Together To Connect And Heal

Adults can also benefit from affinity groups that help fortify the human spirit. As a member of the GAA’s Board of Directors, Trustee Una Basak ’90 was the founding chair of the Alumni Affinity Engagement Committee. Basak, a Harvard University graduate, says that in 2021 the GAA directors quickly identified three alumni needs: to engage and solicit feedback, to improve communication with young alumni and to create affinity groups. It became very clear, she says, that they needed to respond with some level of programming and safe space creation for alumni to engage with one another. The Alumni Affinity Engagement Committee was formed and focused first on bringing affinity groups together during the 2021 virtual reunion program, a practice that had begun with reunion classes prior to the pandemic.

Basak says she learned a lot organizing these groups, not the least of which was just how difficult it would be to identify BIPOC and LGBTQ+ individuals. In the beginning, the committee relied on word of mouth, she says. The Academy has since updated its directory to allow alumni to self-identify and add race, ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation to their profiles.

The committee invited alumni to join affinity breakout sessions for those who identify as Asian, Black, Hispanic/ Latinx and LGBTQ+. Although not very well attended, the alumni who participated in the virtual events expressed an enthusiastic desire to keep going.

The excitement motivated Basak, and she worked with Exeter’s Office of Institutional Advancement and Alumni Relations to begin a more robust virtual program for four alumni affinity groups — Asian American Pacific Islander, Black, Hispanic/Latinx and LGBTQ+. The alumni who gathered hailed from graduating classes as far back as the 1960s, adding to the richness of the conversations and the variety of experiences.

“It was emotional and very valuable to each and every person on the Zoom,” says Basak, who is of South Indian heritage. “Some of the alums have been carrying traumatic stories for years, but in creating these containers to share experiences, we have built a support system that in a way heals and brings back alums who love the Academy but were not as engaged. The engagement is deeper and more meaningful.”

Trustee Paulina Jerez ’91 attended a Latino/x affinity gathering in December and says, “Not only was this program a great opportunity to [get to know alumni], but it provided a space where we could share our stories and common experiences with Exonians of similar backgrounds.”

Basak says that the alumni affinity groups are mirroring the extraordinary work being done through the Office of Multicultural Affairs on behalf of current students. “We did not have that when we were students in the ’90s,” she says. “For example, there was an Asian Society when I was a student, but it was mostly about food, and there is nothing wrong with that. But we are going deeper. ... I am hoping for stories, when brought to light, that are going to create some paths toward a better engagement between alumni and the Academy. And healing.”

How Far The Academy Has Come

Nat Butler ’64 wishes an LGBTQ+ space had existed when he attended the Academy more than 60 years ago. Butler, a newly appointed General Alumni Association director and vice chair of the GAA Alumni Affinity Engagement Committee, wrote an article for the winter 1994 edition of The Exeter Bulletin outlining his initial efforts to connect gay alumni with the Academy and one another. It was a first attempt to build a gay alumni affinity group, and nearly two decades later, Butler is realizing the dream. “I am a dinosaur,” he says, chuckling, “and to see how much progress has happened at the Academy is very exciting.”

Butler attended the Academy when it was a predominantly white male institution. There were two Black students in his class and, he says, the only women he ever saw were faculty wives and food servers, besides the girls who attended occasional dances. It was a time, he recalls vividly, when boys openly made fun of boys for being queer. To this day he flinches when young gays openly embrace the word queer because it caused him so much emotional damage. “The last thing you wanted was to be called that by your classmates or have anyone suspect that you might be homosexual,” he says. “It was a very difficult time to be gay.”

Identity + Affinity Virtual Events

The directors of the General Alumni Association and alumni volunteers are organizing a series of Harkness and panel discussions that connect multi-generational Exonians around shared identities and experiences. For more information or to get involved, please contact alumni@exeter.edu.

In the ’60s, same-sex sexual activity was illegal in most states. For Butler, the stress was mostly about keeping his nascent gay identity a secret. He says he lived in constant fear and “was totally petrified that anyone would find out.” He was in his mid-20s before he came out to his father, Jonathan Butler ’35.

Despite the challenges of the time, Butler excelled at Exeter. He was elected president of his class and president of the Student Council. He graduated from Harvard College and, at the height of the Vietnam War, followed in his father’s footsteps to enlist in the Navy.

Butler’s mother died of breast cancer soon after he turned 11, and his father fell apart. At 14, he arrived at the Academy. In many ways, Butler says, the Exeter community became his extended family. That is why the school is so important to him, he says.

“As time went on, I remembered how difficult it was to be a gay student at Exeter, and I didn’t want other students to go through what I went through,” Butler, now 76, says, tearing up. He gradually let his Academy friends know he was a gay alumnus, and in 1991 he volunteered to return to campus to give a talk.

The first time the topic of homosexuality was openly discussed at Exeter, he says, was in 1987, when a group of alumni spoke at an assembly. Butler’s talk was the second time. His activism and organizing on behalf of LGBTQ+ alumni has not stopped.

After his father died, Butler established a scholarship in his name. He has been happy to learn that some of the scholarships have gone to LGBTQ+ students. In 1994,

Butler received the President’s Award “in recognition of his work as a liaison between the Academy and its gay and lesbian alumni/ae.” In 2006, he was presented with the Founders’ Day Award for his exceptional and sustained service to the Academy.

“For years I would send an email to every single alumni class president introducing myself as a gay alumnus and suggesting an event for gay alums,” he says. “Some wrote back saying they don’t have any gay classmates. But they had to have a conversation with me, and I am happy that at least this issue got on the radar.”

Butler is excited to see how far the Academy has come regarding LGBTQ+ and BIPOC inclusion, and especially to see alumni affinity groups blossom. “The tide is shifting, but it is slow,” he says. “As much as has been done, there is so much more to do. Until we can really be who we are when we come from out of the womb, then we are never going to be comfortable. We develop prejudices at a young age; we pick them up and learn — it’s in the air. And if you are not aware of them, you can’t work on them, so it’s a constant vigil. We may never get to the point where there is no racism or no homophobia, but that does not mean we won’t try.”

He acknowledged he had never imagined that more than six decades after graduating from the Academy, he would be considered an important LGBTQ+ leader. “I don’t consider myself a leader,” he says. “I consider myself being myself, and that is all we can be: ourselves. If I can be a good example for someone else, that is terrific.” E

<title> Unlocking the Code Computer Science Learning at Exeter

On a Friday afternoon in November, Davido Zhang ’25 and Clark Wu ’23 huddle around their open laptops in the Phelps Science Center discussing ... cats. They are deep into the task, perfecting code for a game they’ve created called “Catguessr.” It’s their final project for CSC590: Selected Topics in Computer Science, which this term focuses on database development. The game rewards players for identifying up to 70 breeds of cats. Classifying an American shorthair may be simple for a cat lover, but developing the game’s back end hasn’t been easy. Zhang, Wu and their classmates have had to master four web programming languages — HTML, CSS, JavaScript and SQL — to specifically manage the data and databases they’ve created for their projects. “The students have to know what a website looks like, what would make it more attractive to people looking at it, then how to make it interactive,” Computer Science Instructor Ranila Haider says.

CSC590 is Exeter’s highest-level computer science course, and one of seven courses offered as part of the Academy’s wide-ranging curriculum. Based on algorithmic thinking, the curriculum is unique in its focus on hands-on learning and emphasis on Harkness-style understanding of technology and its societal impact. The goal is not only to inspire students to explore their passion for writing code or designing mobile apps, but also to help students recognize the relationships between computer science and other disciplines, such as physics or the humanities, and encourage them to study further.

“Our courses create a pathway for students who don’t consider themselves ‘computer science people,’” says Sean Campbell, Alfred H. Hayes ’25 and Jean M. Hayes Teaching Chair in Science and instructor in Computer Science. Director of Studies Scott Saltman agrees. “Before the graduation requirement was put in place, there were kids who didn’t take computer science or just took one course,” he says. “Now mid- and upper-level courses are attracting students into the program.”

A Brief History of Computer Science

Computer science has been a part of campus learning since the 1960s, when the Academy first subscribed to Dartmouth College’s time-sharing computer system. Through this pioneering arrangement, faculty and students in Exeter accessed Dartmouth’s giant mainframe in Hanover, New Hampshire, through a General Electric-235 computer and teletype, a typewriter-style keyboard, housed on the first floor of the Academy Building. Information processed at Dartmouth was printed on spools of paper in Exeter. Students and teachers used the system to write programs in BASIC (Beginners All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) — a computer language created by John G. Kemeny and

Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College in 1964 — to solve math problems, but playing games like tic-tac-toe, roulette, golf, baseball and bingo were equally popular. According to The Exonian, more than 100 people used the GE-235 in 1966. The Exeter Computing Club was founded the same year, heralding a new passion for exploring computer languages on campus. There was so much interest in burgeoning computer technology that discussions began about adding courses to the curriculum. In 1968, the math faculty recommended a two-week noncredit course in writing BASIC. Four years later, the Curriculum Committee recommended adding an interdisciplinary course for preps, teaching computer techniques alongside “skills of observation, selection, arrangement of data, generalization from evidence and communication of results.” The first dedicated computer science course, an advanced placement course focused on learning the PASCAL language, was officially added to the curriculum in 1983. The course “marks the acceptance of the personal computer as the indispensable education and communications tool of our time,” Principal Stephen Kurtz wrote in the fall 1983 issue of The Exeter Bulletin

The same year, an interdisciplinary committee developed guidelines for future computer science courses and called for making personal computers available to each student and instructor. Exeter also led the way in instructor training when it started a mathematics and computer conference for secondary school teachers in the early 1980s. Now called the Anja S. Greer Conference on Mathematics and Technology, it’s the school’s longest-running teacher conference.

Navigating Change

Change does not come without challenges. Students and faculty with computer expertise were recruited to shepherd Exeter through its early transition to the new technology. Cedric Antosiewicz ’79 was part of a small group of Exonians charged with helping maintain the school’s computers while he was a student. He returned to campus in 1983 to teach a weeklong summer class about PASCAL to math, science, English and classics faculty.

Math Instructor Bill Campbell taught interested faculty, staff and spouses a course on BASIC.

Math Instructor Eric Bergofsky, an early school computer coordinator, recruited students from his classes as well as the Computer Club to help him maintain Exeter’s state-of-the-art Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-11/44 time-sharing mainframe (it had 256K of internal memory and two disk drives). Located in Room 103 of the Academy Building, next to a classroom that contained teletypes hard-wired into the mainframe, it had to be backed up daily onto large circular disks “that held less memory than an average cellphone,” Bergofsky says. “We had to learn the Digital Equipment Corporation language to administer the machine, check the manual when there was a problem or call Digital Equipment if we had questions.”

Peter Durham ’85 was among the students working alongside Bergofsky to help manage the computer room. He was one of the few students who arrived at Exeter with his own personal computer, a TRS-80 color desktop “microcomputer” from Tandy Radio Shack that he happily shared with classmates. “It was plugged into a TV,” Durham says. “I had to get special permission to have a television on campus.” He says he developed his knack for teaching at Exeter, where he held workshops for students and faculty on the C and PDP-11 assembler languages.

Durham became the chief software architect of the technology that powered MSNBC.com and later NBC News Digital. In true non sibi spirit, he’s now a senior software engineer developing programs that power Microsoft’s Accessibility Insights, open-source tools helping make computers and the internet more accessible to people with disabilities.

Hard-Wired for Success

In 1996, each dorm was wired for internet access and each dorm room was wired for a landline telephone. As Exeter became “hard-wired” for success, a support system was needed. Academic Technology Coordinator Vi Richter, who joined the Math Department that year to teach classes in applications like Microsoft Word and Excel, became the school’s first dedicated computer support desk person. “I was on the phone eight hours a day, fielding questions,” she says.

Christine Robson Weaver ’99 was one of two female students recruited to troubleshoot tech issues in girls dorms as each came online. “We called ourselves ‘The Technical Ethernet Crisis Helpers,’” says Weaver, a former Bancroft Hall resident. “Any time there was a problem after a dorm went online, we checked it out. My dorm and one boys dorm were the first to come online, and we had an instant connection because we knew we could phone or email each other.”