Dear Reader,
In my first Letter to the Editor almost a year ago, I promised to use the Scroll to make sense of our experiences in this universe and urged readers to look beyond Deerfield’s ivory towers to glimpse a world wider and truer.
In the past year, we have stood by our commitment and strived to increase international exposure. We created a Russo-Ukrainian War timeline and interviewed affected Deerfield students, featured Op-Eds on the 2022 April Shanghai lockdown, and established the Global Updates columns covering everything from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the Brazilian coup to the Iranian feminist uprising. Furthermore, the Scroll’s new podcast “The Even Hour” introduced alumnus Nick Capodice ’97 and dived into his experience as a civic educator.
In terms of national news, the XCVII issues have addressed the overturning of Roe v. Wade, rallied against racial violence in the wake of the Buffalo shooting, featured the Gender and Sexuality Alliance’s rebuke of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” Bill, and covered the history of the Deerfield Black Student Alliance.
In our January issue, we published three articles dissecting the emergence of ChatGPT and artificial intelligence and ChatGPT (with a special article titled “Deerfield Academy: A Guide to Surviving the Wilderness” written by ChatGPT). In this April issue, you’ll find special Earth Day pages with articles ranging from the Class of 1973 Sustainability Fund to Prince Hussain Aga Khan’s ’92 involvement in wildlife photography.
Though the Scroll’s reach has been far and wide, our central purpose is still to serve the Deerfield community and many of our articles reflect the mission.
To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Choate-Deerfield rivalry, we collaborated with The Choate News to create an unprecedented joint issue examining everything from athletics meets to cheerleading sweatshirts to un- healthy competitions. A February Board-Ed discussed the Scroll Board’s lack of racial diversity. A last-minute late-night decision in January transformed our original Board-Ed into a heartfelt conversation detailing our personal struggles with mental health at Deerfield. During the past year, we have had the privilege to cover groundbreaking and light-hearted community news, whether that was the appointment of the first female President of the Board of Trustees, faculty love stories, the Scroll being fined over copyright infringement, haunted Deerfield dorms, or contraceptive access at the Academy.
At the end of the day, however, none of this would have been possible without my partners-in-crime Jerry Huang ’23 and Clara Chae ’23, who make it all worth it (I joke to others that we’re a three-headed monster), our wonderful advisors, Mr. Romick and Ms. Delwiche, who have adopted the Scroll (and us) as their children, and the XCVII Board who makes the roughest nights filled with laughter.
Four years ago, I would never have imagined that the scrawny little girl from Shanghai would become the 97th Editor-in-Chief of the Scroll, that she would spend her weekdays in the Kendall basement debating song choices as she laid out articles, that she would be doing something that she loved so much.
Warmly, Sunshine 陈心旎