Dear Parents, No doubt as you walk with us today, you’re bemoaning the construction sites – eyesores on the normally picturesque campus. They’ve become part of the landscape. We’ve stopped noticing. On this campus under construction, there is a community rapidly changing. Since September, the Dow Jones has fallen and risen faster than the tides and taken part of our endowment with it. Kip Fulbeck graced us with his politically-charged presence at All-School Meeting. The school launched a new website, and with it faux parchment and eye-catching yet clichéd student profiles. And we’ve been discussing all of it. Last week, though – we started talking about something completely different. Three students had been arrested for drug and alcohol possession, two of them for intent to distribute cocaine. You may not see this highlighted in speeches in the chapel or at lunches with tablecloths in Uncommons. But you should be talking. Placing your students in the care and keeping of a boarding school means surrendering a certain amount of control to house counselors, faculty members and administrators acting “in loco parentis.” We have this to say: these events notwithstanding, Phillips Academy places the highest value on care for its students. Talk to your son and daughter about these events, and we think that you will find he or she to agree, and to respond in a grounded way. But we’re all still here, and the focus of students, parents and teachers is exactly where it should be: on what it means to be part of Phillips Academy. The pace of life is among the concerns that still need addressing at this institution. While students do control to a large extent how much sleep they get, Phillips Academy needs to do more than bring ASM speakers and give a week – the aptly-named “Wellness Week” – devoted to lectures on sleep deprivation and being well. While ten days have been added to the school year, the class work has not been spread out over them, as the proposal had intended. Instead, we’re working just as hard, for longer, and are more exhausted than ever. Still, construction, arrests and pace of life notwithstanding, it has been a good start to Fall Term. And look up. The leaves are turning.
