“I will act with respect, integrity, and care for others.” This the student pledges of Deerfield Academy, one we have gotten familiar with after almost half a year of Peep the Pledge announcements at school meeting. Yet, there’s a distinct barrier—both intentional and unintentional—that separates us boarding school students from the rest of the world.
Yes, obviously everyone has experienced reading the annual Scroll article on how dreadful our civic bubble is at some point, but the solution isn’t just shaming students to be more aware of the world. For Deerfield to truly fulfill the goals of their motto and student pledge, there needs to be a joint student and institutional push for greater civic participation in the communities that surround our campus.
Anna: I was lucky to go to a middle school where most families had the available resources to give back to the community. I would argue that’s even more true at Deer-
field, a school with an over $900 million endowment. So why has the only community service experience I’ve had at this school been my freshman fall visit to a local church, helping sort food donations? Why are service hours not a graduation requirement, as they are in many public and private high schools? Why do so many co-curriculars get out of community service without any consequences? All of these questions have remained unanswered. The answer lies in a lack of institutional opportunities, but also a personal failure. I have often justified my failure to act by reassuring myself that I help my community over the summer, I volunteer with my scouting troop. Yet I being away from home shouldn’t give me a get-out-of-jail free card for service.
Yoonsa: In fourth grade, I spent an embarrassing amount of time prying open my piggy bank—which I believed to be the entirety of my life savings at the time—to collect a whopping sum of around
$24 dollars for the World Wildlife Fund, dedicated to protect the endangered animals I loved. As humans, we have an intrinsic desire to help other people, one we can see in the behavior of younger children. There is a second part to our school pledge that I worry many of us overlook: “I will seek to inspire the same values in our community and beyond.” What better place is there to start than here, in our own community? We have the resources to travel hours or days to serve communities abroad, as trips provided by the Center for Service and Global Citizenship attest. The number of students that sign up for these trips is a testament to how much our student body cares, how much our school wants to give us opportunities to care. However, to “buy in” to service does not mean one must go all-out regarding location and distance. To truly become global citizens, we must start here, right in our own backyard.
Billy: This summer, I worked at the Massachusetts Statehouse as an intern under the office of Joint Committee on Mental Health, Substance Use and Recovery. There, I learned about the opioid crisis occurring in our literal backyard. In Greenfield, you are 124% more likely to be checked into a hospital for an opioid related overdose than the rest of the state, with the average age being 18-25 years old. More than just shocking, it was shameful that I didn’t know this earlier. In the last 4 years, I regularly make trips to Greenfield with my friends to eat out and buy snacks, I’ve walked the streets listening to music, and I never noticed the needles and homelessness besides me. Maybe that’s just me, but I’d wager most of the student population here shares in my ignorance. We’ve somehow deluded ourselves that as a student body, we’re models of citizenship, engagement, and civic excellence while turning a blind eye to our lack of involvement in the communities around us. We as the student body must make an active effort to engage in our direct community, not just expect information and service opportunities to be placed in our laps.
Avery: Last year, I conducted a six month long photojournalism project, under the guidance of Deerfield’s photography teacher Tim Trelease. For this project, I made several trips to Greenfield
and interviewed and photographed dozens of people on the streets battling addiction. These experiences made me question Deerfield Academy’s moral responsibility to ameliorating civic injustices in the communities that surround us. Is the Academy fulfilling its mission to “develop partnerships between Deerfield and local agencies that address critical needs in Franklin County?”
Nico: If we want Deerfield students to be civically engaged then we must change our school’s view on service itself. To most Deerfield students community service currently exists as either A: a day off from co-curriculars when you complete a mundane task, or B: an activity to add to your achievements list for college. Many students see community service as an activity not done out of empathy but instead to bolster one’s resume. In a society where cut-throat competition is encouraged, it is no wonder students see community service as simply a leg up over one’s peers. Civic engagement can no longer be only a box to be checked, and that will take a reversal of our school culture and America as a whole.
We hope that, for these reasons, you will allow us a break from our normal Global Updates and allow us to focus on events happening closer to home.