Phillips Exeter Academy

Healthy living and learning

To accommodate its expanding academic curriculum, as well as the Academy’s commitment to promoting students’ physical, mental and emotional wellness, Exeter’s Health and Human Development Department now makes its home into the spacious lower level of New Hall dormitory after years in the Lamont Health and Wellness Center.

New Hall’s academic space features four Harkness classrooms, a departmental office and a flexible lobby that can be used for group activities such as yoga, meditation and cooking, or just relaxing and connecting when not in class. Bookshelves lining the walls are home to an expanded library of health- and wellness-related books that students can browse and borrow.

While living and learning are kept securely separate — dorm residents have to exit the building to access the academic space — every Exeter student has the opportunity to take classes in New Hall. “It used to be that only ninth graders and new 10th graders took health,” Department Chair Michelle Soucy says. “Right before the pandemic, we changed it, and now students from all four years take at least one class in Health and Human Development.”

In addition to introductory courses aimed at helping all new students acclimate to the school, the Health and Human Development curriculum includes a Teen Health course for each class year, including one designed to help prepare seniors for life beyond Exeter. “We cover finances, learning to cook for yourself, and a bunch of other stuff for what we call the emerging adult phase of life,” Soucy says.

In the courtyard outside the building’s entrance, a circular medallion with the words “youth from every quarter” and an engraving of a lion rampant adorn a stone wall. An anonymous donor intended the medallion, and a soon-to-be- installed stone bench, to serve as a corner of campus dedicated to wellness reflection. The feature complements one of the department’s long-running fall programs, a positive psychology fair where students gather to paint and decorate rocks with messages of positivity. “We’re envisioning that we’ll have a little rock garden there as well,” Soucy says. “We’re always talking about the psychology of looking at things in the positive, and how you can raise your mental health.”

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared in the fall 2022 issue of The Exeter Bulletin.

Abbot Hall

For nearly 75 years, the Academy operated without dormitories. Instead, “the boys boarded about town,” as one Exeter historian writes. But as enrollment grew, along with the cost of living, the Trustees recognized the need to offer on-campus housing to help ensure equal opportunity for all students. Charles H. Bell explains this thinking in his 1883 book Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire: A Historical Sketch, writing that the Trustees “determined to establish at the charge of the Academy, a dormitory and commons hall for the members of the school of limited means, by which the expense of living should be reduced to the minimum.”

The school experimented first with housing students in an Academy-owned building on Spring Street, which had been the J. & B. Williams printing shop. The arrangement worked so well that in September 1852 the Trustees voted “to erect a more suitable and capacious building for the same purpose, in the Academy grounds,” Bell writes. “It opened for use in 1855. It was constructed of brick, and contained rooms for fifty young men, with a dining hall and other needful accommodations; and cost about twenty thousand dollars.”

Abbot Hall, room 13, circa 1879

As Frank H. Cunningham details in his book Familiar Sketches of The Phillips Exeter Academy and Surroundings, the rooms were “furnished at a nominal rent, so that fifty boys are thus supported at about one half the cost of living at the ordinary boarding houses.” Residents paid $1 a year for a room. “The Trustees believe that no other institution of the kind in the country has approached this Academy in giving substantial aid to young men of poverty and merit,” Cunningham writes.

The building was named Abbot Hall, in honor of Benjamin Abbot, the Academy’s second principal, who served from 1788 to 1838. Abbot was a respected and beloved instructor, teaching such subjects as Latin and Greek for 44 years and counting among his pupils statesman Daniel Webster.

Ever considerate of the Academy’s mission to educate students in goodness and knowledge, the Trustees voted to post, inside each student’s Abbot Hall door, a set of eight rules, including: “There shall not be in or about the building, during study hours, any singing or playing of musical instruments, or any other noise inconsistent with the quiet study; and good order shall be preserved at all times.”

Abbot Hall remained the only on-campus dormitory until Soule Hall was built in 1893.

 

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared in the fall 2022 issue of The Exeter Bulletin.

Welcome to New Hall

Move-in day falls on a sunny Wednesday in early September. All over campus, welcome signs decorate open dormitory doors and chalk-drawn arrows point the way inside. Students lug crates and drag suitcases along the pathways, taking frequent breaks to hug friends and compare summers.

A bit of extra excitement fills the air, along with the smell of fresh paint, as students and their families make their way down Front Street and enter the newly constructed 42,000-square-foot dormitory, currently known as New Hall. Resident faculty members perched on red Adirondack chairs greet new arrivals as they pass through the window-lined entrance and step tentatively into the dorm’s light-filled common room, where proctors have gathered to answer any questions.

In a third-floor room, Kendra Wang ’25 unpacks while her roommate, Jackie Addo ’25, has most of her belongings neatly arranged on her side of the room. The cozy double is made roomier by built-in wooden desks and shelves set against the window and dressers tucked underneath raised beds. Tackboard covers the wall above each bed, awaiting each student’s personalized array of fairy lights, posters, photographs and other decorations.

New Hall is the first dormitory to be built on Exeter’s campus in more than 50 years. If that isn’t significant enough, the sustainably constructed building also houses an academic space with four Harkness classrooms, bringing living and learning at Exeter together under one roof for the first time. With its opening this fall, New Hall has created a vibrant community hub on the western edge of campus, furthering the school’s vision of residential life as an essential part of the Exeter experience.

Priya Nwakanma ’23

“There’s something really unique that boarding schools can offer to both day and boarding students,” says Carol Cahalane, the Academy’s dean of residential life since 2018. “It’s the opportunity to have many places and ways to gather with peers who are equally interested in connecting and learning about each other and the world together.”

Cahalane is far from the first school leader to place residential life among the most valuable aspects of an Exeter education. The process of converting the Academy to a residential school goes back to the construction of the first permanent dormitory on campus, Abbot Hall, in 1855 (see sidebar, “Abbot Hall”). In the early 1930s, Edward Harkness’ revolutionary gift funded the addition of Bancroft, Langdell, Merrill and Wheelwright Halls. This brought the school’s total to 13 large dormitories, each housing 35 to 70 students, in addition to eight smaller house dorms, and provided accommodations for instructors with families for the first time.

“The residential element is at the heart of the education we provide,” Principal Richard W. Day reported to the Trustees in 1971, two years after the last two large residence halls to be built, Main Street Dormitory and Ewald Dormitory, opened on the northern edge of campus. “Dormitory life is not separate from but an extension of what takes place in the classroom. The value of each experience is dependent upon the quality of both.”

This symbiotic relationship was on everyone’s mind in 2019-20, when more than 700 community members weighed in on a vision for Exeter’s future and composed a Campus Master Plan. Based on the result of a student housing study, the plan included the renovation of six existing dorms over the next decade, as well as the construction of a new residence hall to house 60 students. This new hall would allow for renovation of existing dorms without either executing that renovation completely in the summers or displacing students during the school year.

“The new dormitory is not about an expansion of student enrollment,” says Heather Taylor, campus planner and architect. “It’s about a long-term strategy to improve student life and housing options on campus.”

Following Wentworth’s renewal, Langdell and Merrill Halls are the next dorms scheduled for renovation, and students from both will be living together in New Hall for the next two years. Langdell and Merrill are expected to reopen in the 2024-25 school year along with an expansive new Wetherell Dining Complex. “We’re very fortunate in that all of these are good buildings with good bones that we will be able to renovate them for the next 100 years,”

Taylor says. “My hope is that the same is true for the new dorm. You want to design a building that is timeless and functions for generations of our students.”

Historic Dow Barn houses two of New Hall’s five faculty apartments.

In accordance with the principle of environmental stewardship, a key aspect of the Campus Master Plan, the primary structure of New Hall is wood frame rather than steel, which minimizes its carbon footprint. Inside, the building maximizes natural light in both the residential and academic spaces, and geothermal heating and cooling systems provide dehumidification to the student rooms and air conditioning and heating to the faculty apartments and academic spaces. Faculty apartments on each level include separate studies opening directly to student hallways, ensuring a strong faculty-student connection as well as privacy for instructors and their families.

The building also incorporates the historic Dow Barn, which dates to the mid-19th century. Previously used only for storage, the barn was adjacent to neighboring Dow House, a former clinic that the Academy purchased in 1967 to adapt into a student and faculty residence. Dow Barn’s original exposed wood beams now adorn the cathedral ceiling in a second-floor faculty apartment. The façade on the barn end of New Hall incorporates the double doors and diamond-shaped windows of the original barn, as well as the vented cupola and weather vane. The same angular windows, repeated along the rest of the building, echo the barn’s classic look and feel, creating a seamless blend of historic and modern.

“I’m proud of the many sustainable features of the new building,” says Mark Leighton, director of Facilities Management. “Especially the reuse of Dow Barn, enhanced building envelope, geothermal systems, low-maintenance materials, and efficient sizing and layouts of the student and faculty spaces.” In addition to its main residential space — bedrooms for 60 students, five faculty apartments, an airy front common room and ground-floor game room with kitchen and laundry — the building’s academic wing is home to the Health and Human Development Department, with four Harkness classrooms, a department room and a flexible common area.

New Hall was built on the former site of Fisher Theater, which was the hub of the Academy’s performing arts offerings from 1971 until the opening of The David E. and Stacey L. Goel Center for Theater and Dance in 2018. The sloping topography of the building site allows the new dormitory to easily incorporate academic and residential space, while keeping them securely separate.

The academic entrance, on the north side of the building, opens onto a courtyard adjacent to the Forrestal- Bowld Music Center and is a short walk from both the Lamont Health and Wellness Center and the Phelps Science Center. On the Front Street side, a broad campus green in front of the student entrance to New Hall links the building to two smaller dorms, Dow House and Front Street Dormitory. “I love how the topography allows for two distinct entrances, both of which have strong connections to campus,” Leighton says.

While the union of Merrill and Langdell in New Hall was born of necessity, it’s also an unprecedented opportunity. For the first time, former residents of two different dorms, their affiliated day students, and a small group of new students have come together to create a unified dorm

identity and forge the enduring bonds so many Exonians take away from their time on campus. “I do think each dorm has a very unique culture, and I’m fascinated to see how they mix,” says Troy Samuels, the head of New Hall and an instructor in history. “I’m excited to get to play around in terms of building community.”

The main floor conference area.

While Samuels and other dorm faculty members take the lead in this process, they will rely on the support of senior proctors for the vital task of building dorm unity. Other large dorms on campus typically have six to eight student proctors, but New Hall has 10, five from each former dorm. “At the beginning of the year, we’re going to be doing double duty,” says Bronwyn Hall ’23, a senior proctor who spent her first three years at Exeter living in Merrill. “Two people on duty every night, one from each dorm, so that we make sure everyone gets a chance to get to know people that they don’t know, and even the proctors get to know the other dorm’s proctors.”

Hall and her fellow proctors also played a key role in helping their dormmates prepare for the transition during last spring term. Merrill and Langdell residents went through the process of room draw together and also gathered on a few more informal occasions, like toasting s’mores on Wetherell-Ford Quad. “I think they’re going to be a little cautious at first,” Samuels says, adding that the new dorm “has just so many wonderful spaces and wonderful opportunities for them. It’s going to be great.”

Students Jackie Addo ’26 and Kendra Wang ’25 are one of several cross-dorm pairings in New Hall.

After meeting for the first time during an off-campus dinner outing at a local Thai restaurant, Addo and Wang became closer friends when they both ran winter track. As preps, Addo lived in Langdell and Wang lived in Merrill, but they decided in the spring to room together this year, becoming one of several cross-dorm pairings in New Hall.

A week after move-in day, their double looked well lived-in. They have both ordered shelves to attach to their beds for phone chargers and alarm clocks, and tacked up photographs, prints and collages over their beds. A shared built-in desk, which runs the length of the wall beneath the windows, is loaded with textbooks, laptops, Clorox wipes and other dorm room staples.

“I really like the view, especially when I’m studying,” Addo says. “When times get stressful, it’s really nice to look out at the trees.” The desk is so roomy that she has placed a second chair at the end, ideal for study sessions with a friend. Wang, a self-proclaimed “super clothes shopper,” loves the big closets.

Addo and Wang acknowledged having mixed feelings over the summer about the move to New Hall, and they worried about missing the close-knit culture of their former dorms. Now, however, they are optimistic. “There was a lot of emphasis in the first dorm meeting of everyone really trying to make the effort to see us as one big dorm,” Wang says. “I think that’s actually going really well.”

Addo agreed, saying: “There are a lot of people from Merrill that I wanted to talk to — people in leadership roles or people that play on the volleyball team — but never really got to know. I’m still working on that since it’s only been a week. But I feel really close with the Merrill people, and I’m really excited to see what we can do as one dorm.”

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared in the fall 2022 issue of The Exeter Bulletin.

A winning culture

Building leadership, building culture and building community. These are all part of the game plan behind the Captains’ Council, an initiative implemented last fall by the Physical Education and Athletics Department. It brings together the administration and more than 70 Big Red varsity captains to discuss opportunities, challenges and ideas pertinent to Exeter teams.

“The first year of the Captains’ Council was a great way for us to get to know our leaders at a deeper level, have a two-way sharing of information and get the pulse of the student-athlete experience,” Director of Physical Education and Athletics Jason Baseden says. “The council is a place for students to talk to us about their experience and set the standard for what they want their experience as Exonians to be.”

This year, the council members joined proctors, student listeners and other student leaders on campus prior to the official move-in day to take part in leadership training workshops.

The Physical Education and Athletics Department also partnered with P/ATH, Progress Through Athletics, to further educate our students, coaches and the department on building a safe, equitable, inclusive and winning culture.

“P/ATH has invaluable tools and lessons that hit home to leaders in sports across all levels, high school through professional,” Baseden says, noting that the P/ATH curriculum touches on topics such as building confidence, identity, empowerment and being a great teammate.

“We want our athletes to set the objectives they have culturally, in the greater community, on their teams and on the field and have us, as the adults, give them the tools they need to reach their goals.

 

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared in the fall 2022 issue of The Exeter Bulletin.

Leading the library forward

Soon after arriving at Exeter, Laura Wood had a conversation with a former faculty member who expressed concern that students just weren’t using the Class of 1945 Library anymore.

“Then in the next breath, [the person] mentioned, ‘Well, the students are doing their research using databases,’ and then went on from there,” she recalls. “So, I brought the conversation back around to say that if the students are using databases for research, then they are using the Library. That is the Library.”

In our internet-dependent, post-card catalog age, Wood knows and embraces the challenges that come with ensuring that a school library stays relevant to students, teachers and other community members. This summer, she kicked off her tenure as only the fifth Academy Librarian in more than 50 years, having most recently worked as the associate university librarian for research and education at Harvard University.

An avid hiker and snowshoer, Wood lives off campus with her wife and 12-year-old son. As she settled into her new role this summer, we spoke with her about her background and her introduction to Exeter, as well as her strategy for collaborating with other departments and leading the Library into its next phase.

How did you decide to become a librarian?
I thought I wanted to become a professor. I was very interested in the study of religion, and I was pursuing a master’s degree [at Yale Divinity School]. But I came to the very quick realization that I did not want to be a writer, and that if I were to pursue being a professor, writing would be a major component. That got me thinking, what’s closer to what I do love? Finding information, supporting other people’s research, organizing things — the way that libraries do. I went on to get a library science degree, so I could put that into practice and have a practical application of my religion studies.
 
Having worked at the university level up to this point, what made you want to come to a secondary school like Exeter?
Like many people worldwide, I found myself rethinking how I spent my time before the pandemic. It crystallized for me some things that were important that I hadn’t prioritized and weren’t really present in the work that I was doing, like being a member of a community. I loved working in research universities and with librarians, but I didn’t get to work with students, and I didn’t get to participate in the life of the university in any kind of broad way. I’m interested in libraries being a part of the educational process. I think of myself as an educator, and I was looking for an opportunity where I could better identify as a member of a community of educators.
 
What are some of your initial impressions of Exeter and the Academy Library?
I don’t feel like I have the full taste [of the school] yet. Exeter Summer is great to see and to be part of, and it gave me a chance to focus on the staff and the day-to-day workings of the Library without being overwhelmed. The Library staff here have done a great job managing through a big transition; they have been experimenting with new programs and adapting existing work to the new constraints of the pandemic. The demands on them have rapidly changed, including how the building gets used to support PEA needs.
 
What do you think the role of the Academy Library is in life at Exeter?
Throughout my career, because of the rise of digitization, it’s been harder and harder for people to understand what the role of libraries can be. I always think of libraries as three parts. You have a building, a collection and expertise (meaning the people who can help the other stuff make sense). There’s a strong weight [at Exeter] on the Library as a building, but there may be opportunity for a better balance as we think about what libraries can do and what this library already does, much of which is hard to see because it is bits and bytes and digital. It’s a constant learning process for me, of how we can work with technology and with content in digital forms and maximize the library’s ability to help faculty and students as they pursue their intellectual questions and conversations (as well as assignments).
 
Could you share some goals for the school year ahead?
My goal is to be out of the library a lot. I want to understand the athletics program. I want to understand CAPS [Counseling and Psychological Services]. I want to understand the life of the classroom. My goal is to figure out how this library can continue with and increase its ability to partner with the rest of the institution, and to meet needs that maybe people haven’t even recognized yet. Because that’s what libraries do — we can provide things you didn’t know you needed.

New fall sports coaches named

Diana Davis ’03

Girls Varsity Cross-Country

Davis takes over as head coach of the girls cross-country program, succeeding Gwyn Coogan ’83, who led the program for 17 years. As a student, Davis was a former captain of the girls cross-country, winter track and spring track teams. Coincidentally, she is the third member of Exeter’s Math Department to also serve as the head cross-country coach, following Coogan and Rick Parris, who led the squad for 27 years. Davis, who once ran at least two miles every day for over six years, competed for Williams College and has been an assistant coach with Exeter’s program since 2020.

Lovey Roundtree Oliff

Director of Tennis and Squash

In this role, Oliff oversees all operations of Big Red’s six interscholastic tennis teams and four squash teams. Oliff has served as the girls JV tennis coach for the last two years and as the girls squash coach since 2019. As a former classroom teacher and lifelong athlete, she brings to the teams her knowledge of physical and mental preparation, effective team dynamics, and the importance of balance between athletics and the Harkness pedagogy. Oliff is still active in both sports, competing in various United States Tennis Association and US Squash leagues.

 

Editor’s note: This article first appeared in the Fall 2022 issue of The Exeter Bulletin.

Welcome to our new Trustees

Three alumni have recently joined Exeter’s Board of Trustees, adding a wealth of professional experience and shared dedication to the Academy and its mission.

Una Basak ’90, Sam Maruca ’73 and Mike Schmidtberger ’78 began their terms July 1.

Exeter is blessed to have a dedicated body of alumni volunteers, with diverse and expert backgrounds, to oversee the administration of the school and the management of its financial and physical resources. You can see all of our Trustees here.

Below please find below a short bio of each of our three newest volunteers:

 

Una Basak ’90; P’19

Lexington, Massachusetts

Una Basak lived in Merrill Hall, played field hockey and lacrosse, and volunteered for Head Start through the Exeter Student Service Organization. She holds an A.B. from Harvard College in government. Una went on to complete premedical requirements and work at the bipolar clinic at Massachusetts General Hospital.

From there, she worked at The Advisory Board Company in Washington, D.C., engaging in best-practice research with health systems across the country. She now serves on the board at her sons’ school for autism, Nashoba Learning Group, and the Lurie Center for Autism at Massachusetts General Hospital. Through the Operation House Call program at The Arc of Massachusetts, Basak teaches medical students at Boston University Medical Center and Harvard Medical School about treating individuals with developmental disabilities. An elected director of the GAA since 2018, she became a GAA vice president this year.

“I am coming to this role with a deep affection for the Academy and the recognition of a need to foster connection with our alumni of different affinities,” Basak says. “I hope to be able to continue the work to include and accommodate the differences among our alumni and work with the Academy to best address the evolution of our alumni community and engage as many alums as we can in as many creative ways as we can.”

 

Samuel M. Maruca ’73; P’04, P’07, P’10

Washington, D.C.

Sam Maruca entered as a prep from Lawrenceville, New Jersey, and lived in Bancroft Hall, Dunbar Hall and Lamont Hall. He was active in the glee club, orchestra, student government and basketball, and “majored” in classical languages. Maruca received a B.A. with honors in American studies from Yale College. After graduation, Sam worked for the House Administration Committee of the U.S. Congress and as a law clerk, while attending Georgetown University Law Center as an evening student. He served on The Georgetown Law Journal staff and graduated in 1982. During a long career in private practice in Washington, D.C., Maruca specialized in large case dispute resolution in the international tax field. He is currently senior counsel with Covington & Burling LLP and has an active pro bono practice. Maruca is the board treasurer of Capitol Hill Day School. Maruca has been an elected director of the GAA since 2018 and GAA secretary from 2020-22. He became a GAA vice president this year.

“I am thrilled and honored to have the opportunity to give back to Exeter through service on the board!” he says. “Thank you for your trust in me. I look forward to rolling up my sleeves and contributing in any modest way I can to perpetuating and improving this unique institution.”

 

Michael J. Schmidtberger ’78

New York, New York

Mike Schmidtberger entered PEA in January of his prep year. He lived in Wentworth Hall; participated in cross-country, spring track and basketball; served on the Student Council; and worked in the Elm Street Dining Hall. He holds a B.A. with honors in English from Columbia College and a J.D. from Columbia University School of Law, where he served as editor-in-chief of Columbia Human Rights Law Review. Schmidtberger is the chair of the executive committee of the international law firm of Sidley Austin LLP. His principal areas of practice are securities and commodities-related funds and corporate transactions, including related regulatory matters. Schmidtberger has been on the board of directors of the United Way of New York City since 2011 and has served as co-chair since 2016. He is also a member of the Columbia College Board of Visitors, a representative to the Partnership for New York City and a trustee of the Citizens Budget Commission.

“I am honored and quite humbled to have the opportunity to serve the Academy, and all its constituencies, as a trustee,” he says. “I remember well — I was taught by an extraordinary faculty; learned from, and made lifelong friends with, fellow students; and was treated kindly by staff. I look forward to spending more time in Exeter, NH!”  

Editor’s note: This article first appeared in the Fall 2022 issue of The Exeter Bulletin.

Exeter Deconstructed: Cilley Ball

Spikeball is an amusing distraction. Cornhole is great for barbecues. The gentlemen of Cilley Hall have their own game of skill and athletic prowess that has endured for decades: Cilley Ball.

The official sport of the boys dorm is equal parts volleyball and tennis with some custom modifications. The court, set along the building’s north side, is split in half by two wooden benches to serve as the “net.” A game of “C-Ball” — as the denizens refer to it — requires two teams of two and a specific Hedstrom-brand ball. The current game ball is adorned with the puppies of Paw Patrol.

“We tend to pop about eight balls a year, so someone has to go and get balls every once in a while,” says Joe Doherty ’23, a dorm proctor and four-year C-Baller.

“There are three basic rules,” Doherty says. “One, each team gets three touches. Two, each team gets one bounce. Three, if it hits the bench, the touches and bounces reset.”

Believed to have been invented in the 1990s and modified since, Cilley Ball has been a welcome diversion for hundreds of Cilley boys.

“Those forged-on-the-court friendships are worth any dip in grades,” wrote Cilley Hall resident Max de La Bruyère ’09 in The Exonian in 2008. “Something it has taken me a few years to convince my parents.”

Editor’s note: This article first appeared in the Fall 2022 issue of The Exeter Bulletin.

Ecologist and human rights advocate honored with Phillips Award

“I think that what I learned most from Exeter was how to learn,” Sasha Kramer ’94 told a group of students sitting around the Harkness table in Thomas Simpson’s REL450: Social Ethics class. “I think that once you learn how to learn something, you can do anything.”

Kramer’s passion for learning, as well as a lifelong drive toward activism, has fueled a nearly 20-year-long career living and working in Haiti as the co-founder and executive director of Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods (SOIL), a research and development organization that provides sustainable and cost-effective solutions to the sanitation crisis in Haiti. She returned to campus this week to receive the John and Elizabeth Phillips Award, which recognizes an Exonian who has contributed significantly to the welfare of community, country or humanity.

“As an ecologist, human rights advocate and champion of dignified and safe sanitation, you have channeled your passionate devotion to ecological research into the pursuit of basic human rights for people in Haiti and around the world,” said Trustee and General Alumni Association President Betsy Fleming ’86. She delivered Kramer’s award citation in the Assembly Hall on the Friday of Exeter’s Family Weekend and the fall meeting of the Trustees.  

Addressing a packed hall of students, faculty and visiting family members, Kramer spoke of initially feeling out of place at Exeter when she arrived as a prep from rural upstate New York. “Through the daily practice of sitting at a table with my classmates, from a wide diversity of backgrounds, my confidence grew,” she recounted. “[I]n a way that has allowed me to sit with the discomfort of difference; in a way that has reminded me that accepting our own flawed humanity can be a powerful tool for cultivating empathy.”  

Lifelong drive toward activism

Kramer dedicated many of her remarks to Haiti, the island nation that she called “my greatest teacher, my harshest critic, my deepest joy, my most acute heartache, and through it all, my most powerful inspiration.” From reading the novels of Edwidge Danticat and studying the world’s first successful slave rebellion and its impact on the course of global history, she described becoming fascinated by Haiti when she was a teenager. In 2004, while pursuing her Ph.D. in ecology at Stanford University, she traveled to the island nation for the first time as a human rights observer.

“I learned that despite all of the acute human rights abuses happening at the time, the most pervasive human rights abuse in Haiti and globally is poverty,” Kramer said. “While I witnessed terrible suffering, I also witnessed true courage.”  

She would return to Haiti six times over her last two years at Stanford. Determined to use her ecological research to confront the real-world problems of food insecurity and lack of access to sanitation, she moved to northern Haiti and co-founded SOIL in 2006. Through a system called container-based sanitation, the organization works to transform human waste into a resource for fighting climate change and restoring ecosystems, all while helping to reduce the spread of disease and providing employment for Haitian citizens.  

In the aftermath of the devastating 2010 earthquake, SOIL provided emergency public toilets used by some 20,000 people in the capital, Port-au-Prince, and built its first large-scale composting site. Now it is one of Haiti’s largest waste treatment operations, and focuses on developing social business models to provide safe household sanitation in the country’s most vulnerable urban communities.

“Empathy, perspective and perseverance”

Kramer shared with the Assembly audience the greatest lessons Haiti has taught her, saying she hoped they would be relevant to students’ lives as they grow into global citizens. “Much of my academic training focused on objective observation,” she said. “But Haiti quickly taught me that emotional intelligence — the ability to empathize with others, no matter how painful — was the most valuable tool for building the relationships that are pivotal for making change.”

Haiti also taught her perspective, Kramer said, as she set aside personal challenges in the face of “the everyday heroism of my team, who literally would walk through burning roadblocks to ensure sanitation to families cut off by insecurity.” Finally, she learned perseverance. “Undoing centuries of inequality is a lifetime commitment,” Kramer said. “It requires a dedication that takes strength in small victories and the tenacity to persist in the face of immeasurable setbacks.”

A message of gratitude

Kramer closed by thanking her fellow members of the class of 1994, who she said collectively raised more than $6,000 as a show of solidarity for the SOIL team’s work in Haiti. She also thanked the current Exonians in the classes and clubs she met with during her visit, including Simpson’s religion class; Social Innovation, an integrated studies class taught by Director of Service Learning Liz Reyes; and several ESSO groups.

“As I stand before you today, millions of Haitian children face an uncertain educational future as schools across the country close due to insecurity,” Kramer said in her closing remarks. “In a world where education should be a right but remains a privilege, I want to remind you that while this privilege does come with profound responsibility, it also brings with it an incredible opportunity — the opportunity to use your privilege and education to make a difference in the lives of others.”

After Kramer concluded her speech, a gratified Assembly Hall crowd rewarded her with another honor: a standing ovation.

 

Student effort taps into Exeter's green genes

When a groundswell of concern for the environment in America resulted in the first Earth Day in 1970, Exeter students were there, cleaning up roadside litter and trash around town, handing out material on pollution to local residents, and canvassing for signatures to install an incinerator and sewage treatment plant in town.

More than a half-century later, Exeter students remain at the vanguard of environmental activism, launching a new effort to raise awareness on campus of the planet’s plight and what can be done locally to respond.

With “Big Red Goes Green,” the student-led Environmental Action Committee hopes to reignite a commitment to sustainability that largely was smothered by the pandemic and the measures required to cope with it. The club’s co-heads laid out their intentions at assembly Tuesday.

“With Exeter’s busyness, environmental sustainability is often pushed to the side in favor of convenience,” Ophelia Bentley ’23 said, “and thanks to COVID, we’ve been using more plastic and producing more waste than ever.

“While climate change is far too big to be solved by any one of us alone, small actions add up and make a big difference.”

The EAC’s multi-pronged effort includes working with the Academy’s Environmental Stewardship Committee to infuse sustainability into the school’s curriculum “in an interdisciplinary way so we can give credence to the ubiquitous nature of the climate crisis” said Alia Bonanno ’23, “and to appeal to students’ every interest and background so it’s not always so ‘science-y’ and is more accessible.”

Other elements of the initiative are hosting assembly speakers focused on the environment; holding open forums to discuss issues related to climate change; the return of dorm-based E-proctors to promote sustainable measures in the dorms; and a dorm sustainability competition that features a March Madness-style tournament bracket.

The club’s co-heads — who also include Alysha Lai ’23 and Safira Schiowitz ’23 — are all seniors, but their aim is to make a lasting mark on the institution with this latest effort. “Our hope is the work we do now lasts long into the Academy’s future,” Schiowitz said. “That’s why we’re calling it a pillar instead of a theme, because we’re hoping that it will become part of Exeter’s primary values and be more at the forefront of everyone’s mind.”