Does Andover trust its students?
The official, recorded answer to this question is yes. The Blue Book reiterates that the community is built on honest communication between all members of the community, from administrators to faculty to students and every variation along the way.
The day-to-day, real answer to this question also seems to be yes. Students are granted many opportunities to operate independently and to make their own decisions, and they rise to the challenges that this freedom provides.
Today, the faculty are engaged in a discussion to determine how decisions at Andover are made, by whom they are made and for what purpose they are made. It is yet unclear what this discussion will yield and how it will affect the lives of Andover students.
At Exeter last week, a series of new rules and policies were introduced, many of which focused on monitoring students more closely. Faculty patrolling hallways during all-school assemblies in search of students, a crackdown on ‘excessive’ fatigue room usage and a proposal, not yet passed, to add 51 video surveillance cameras on the Exeter campus in the name of safety––these are just some of Exeter’s new policies, according to “The Exonian.”
Andover does not seem to be approaching a place where monitoring the minute movements of students will become a priority or a reality. In a conversation about guiding of Andover life, Academy trust must remain the centerpiece. The administration and faculty must not follow Exeter’s lead in cutting back the freedoms that define one major portion of boarding school life.
Yes, the nature of student life allows for a certain degree of rule-breaking. On weekends, it’s very possible for students never to come in contact with a faculty member. On a school night, boarders may never see their house counselor. This independence is a good thing because it assigns each student responsibility to him or herself.
Students have made mistakes before, and they will make them again. But what has consistently set Andover apart is the way that it responds to these breaches of trust––with an eye towards learning from past failures. If a student skips an ASM or overcuts, he or she receives the merited punishment and learns from that experience. Freedom to roam campus and allocate one’s own time shapes the Andover experience. Students deserve the right to make their own mistakes and learn from them.
This right lies at the core of the value of Andover education. The faculty’s natural concern for student health, safety and happiness might seem to merit the tightening of regulations and rules. This process, however, would deny students of an indispensable learning experience.
This Editorial represents the views of The Phillipian Editorial Board CXXXV.
