EXETER, NH- It was a sad day Wednesday on the Phillips Exeter Academy campus as students and faculty continued to grieve the loss of three students in a horrific Harkness table tragedy. “I just can’t believe something like this could happen, not here,” said Seamus O’Doyle ’07. He was surrounded by fellow students, all crowding around the outside of the English building where the accident happened. Students and community members began leaving flowers and cards outside the building Wednesday evening. On Tuesday morning, during the third period English elective, “Dan Brown is a Genius,” three students were killed when their Harkness table collapsed and crushed their bodies beneath it. The Harkness Table style of teaching has been at the center of Exeter’s history for over 75 years. It is a large, oval table that students and teachers sit around during all classes to encourage discussion and the easy flow of ideas. Nobody expected that it would lead to the death of three of Exeter’s most cherished seniors. Rory McDougall was in the class when the accident occurred. “We were all sitting around the table, just like we always do in all of our classes. Soon, we were all leaning into the center of the table because our discussion was so engaging. Next thing I knew, I heard a snap and the table just went out. Now read that back to me, does it sound dramatic enough?” Phillips Exeter Academy Public Safety, or PEAPS, quickly arrived on the scene and uncovered the cause of the accident. The collapse was blamed on one of the Harkness Table’s faulty legs. Chief PEAPS Officer, Donald Sullivan said of the accident, “It’s a shame that this could happen on our campus. Something like this hasn’t happened at Exeter since 1998.” Next, and probably less wisely, PEAPS carried to students’ bodies out from the English building and threw them onto the roof-rack of their Honda CR-V, carting them off to the Exeter morgue. A horrified crowd of students watched in tears. Today two more members of the Exeter family remain hospitalized, including the class’ professor, Dr. Patrick Finnegan. Finnegan was reached last evening for a phone interview. “There was a photographer visiting our class that day, so I had just arranged the students so that nobody was seated next to anyone of the same race or ethnicity. Next, we were simply enjoying class. I reminded them of my Yale degree, and we read from the poetry book I wrote in Somalia.” A memorial is planned for sometime next week to remember those lost in the Harkness accident. The art department has already revealed a design for a memorial, to be placed outside of the English building. The memorial will feature three students, dancing atop a golden Harkness table. The words “They danced until they could dance no more” will be engraved on a plaque explaining the memorial. Some faculty and students have complained that, “the memorial reminds me a lot of the memorial planned for those dancers who were killed in the 1970s…that memorial that was never built.” Until the dedication, the Exeter community has nothing to do but mourn their painful loss. When asked if the Harkness style of teaching would continue at Exeter, Principal Tyler Tingley responded, “What else do we have to offer in our admissions pamphlets, videos and mailings?” He continued, “Has anyone seen my wife?” She left him six years ago.
