Over the years, Andover’s community responses to rule infractions have greatly evolved. Last fall, the old Disciplinary Committee (DC) was replaced with a new student conduct system that introduced the Growth and Accountability Plan (GAP).
Dr. Susan Esty, Dean of Students and Residential Life, emphasized Andover’s efforts to avoid the negative connotation associated with the term “disciplinary system.” Pointing to the principal values from Andover’s reference guide, “Core Blue,” Esty highlighted the difference between language that calls people to action rather than restricting action.
“We no longer call it a disciplinary system, and that’s a choice because we were intentionally moving away from a system that many schools use that is analogous to the criminal justice system. The word ‘discipline’ actually means ‘to teach,’ so for a long time I think we felt comfortable with the term ‘discipline system.’ But it became synonymous with censure, probation, and language of the criminal justice system, so we decided to move away from that language as much as possible,” said Esty.
Esty continued, “We believe in acting with honesty and integrity. Respect yourself, respect others, [and] build a healthy and inclusive community. All the things that we worry about and would like to address with students that fall outside our community values could be organized in this way. Instead of saying, ‘Don’t do drugs,’ we could say, ‘Respect yourself.’ You want to be healthy so that you can be the best student and learn as much as you can while you’re here, and have fun, and build good relationships.”
Harley Zhong ’26 commented on the three-level misconduct response system and how he thought the policy provided students with more opportunities to grow from their mistakes. Zhong praised the system for its practicality.
“Overall, Andover has a pretty good disciplinary system. The rules are really clear and structured by dividing the outcomes into three levels based on the severity. I think that the school is also doing a great job on providing opportunities to those who made mistakes to let them know their problems and [allowing them to] fix them. There [are] always warnings before punishments. As a new Lower here, I don’t feel that there are any unreasonable rules, and I also really appreciate the school for providing a safe community for us,” said Zhong.
Jeanne Kosciusko-Morizet ’26 compared Andover’s system to what she was familiar with in France. She expressed that Andover’s learning approach to substance abuse was helpful for the current student body.
“To be honest, I don’t really understand the levels of infractions system because I didn’t have that back in France. I think there are some good policies, and some that are sometimes strict. But I understand them because [the school] does that for the safety of everyone. For example, the sanctuary policy is really good. It wasn’t a problem in my old school because in France, drugs aren’t that big of a subject. But I found out that a fair amount of people get into alcohol and drugs [at Andover], so I think that it’s great that we put safety first instead of the punishment,” said Kosciusko-Morizet.
Esty concluded by re-emphasizing the system’s primary goal: to keep students safe and happy. She highlighted the conduct response system’s improvement throughout the years, and the current system’s increased commitment to helping students throughout the accountability process.
“In a way, we’re actually offering more support to students [now]. It used to be, ‘We hope that you’ve…learned from this experience,’ but without actually providing any sort of hands-on opportunities for learning outside of just the adult relationship. But that could look different depending on the student and adult, so now it actually takes more time and effort. But we’re more focused on what happens in the ten weeks after the student or someone makes a mistake… I’m just curious what students would like. What would be effective?” asked Esty.
