Community Conduct Pilots Required “Night-Night”
On Wednesday, Sept. 4, Dean of Residential Life Carol Cahalane and Dean of Academic Affairs Brooks Moriarty hosted an assembly on Academy Basics, covering both the rules that everyone pretty much knows already and the new rules that nobody wanted but got anyway. The old stuff is fairly basic, but the developments in disciplinary responses as well as the new Visitations policy seem to be what students are focusing on the most. Regarding discipline, Exeter has copied Andover once more by renaming the Discipline Committee as the “Community Conduct System.” With this new system came the “Dean’s Warning,” a Community Conduct response in which the deans tell you what a naughty boy you’ve been and how ashamed you should be, then let you go. I’m not saying this is a freebie, but I’m not saying it’s not a freebie. Additionally, the school has added “Community Restoration,” which involves five weeks of stricts and then a really good “sorry.”
Although it might seem like the administration literally could not possibly make this school any better, it just so happens that there’s another major project in the works for Exeter. There are still a lot of details to refine and kinks to hammer out, but it seems that a third Community Conduct response would be taken from modern law practice. Titled “The Infinite Fatigue” this new policy might be piloted fall term, 2020. This response would be available for all levels of offense, whether it be academic dishonesty or physical violence among students, and is foreseen as the “final piece of the administrative puzzle” by faculty, admin and deans alike.
To get into the actual applications of this new rule, as with all other Community Conduct responses, either the Community Conduct Committee or the Dean, in tandem with the chair of the committee, would have to determine that the case merits this specific response. Once this is decided, the student will be “taken care of.”
If you’re still confused after the explanation of this complicated process, don’t fret—you are not alone. As Dean Cahalane loves to remind us, there is no universal formula for each Community Conduct response. However, she has given us a possible situation in which this new rule would be applied.
“Say a student finishes a full five class day, complete with football practice and getting ready for their symphony concert next week. They’re tired, they’re stressed, and by the time they get to their math homework, it’s already two in the morning. At that point, they give up and ask their neighbor if they could give them the answers. If the administration caught wind of this, we would send them to a farm upstate, with rolling green hills with all the Grill cookies they could ever want.”
Although this might be off-putting to some students, most really aren’t surprised that this is the direction the school’s taken. After the new V’s policy, most students’ responses to new policy seems to be something along the lines of, “Whatever; this school doesn’t care about me anyway.” Specific responses were then sought out in order to get a better understanding of the student body’s opinion. An anonymous lower, when asked about their opinion on the policy, replied, “I mean, yeah, I’m scared, but I guess there’s just more of an incentive to follow the rules.” A senior, preferring to remain unnamed, stated, “I think we need to take into account how lenient the school’s been so far. Honestly, this new policy’s just like the old days. If they could handle it, why can’t we?” Finally, a returning upper stated that they “already thought that’s what Red’s Best was for.”
Principal Rawson has not commented on the new policy yet, but the proposed draft of the new policy includes a Principal’s Discretion, where the Community Conduct Committee is removed from the process and Rawson is allowed to play the roles of judge, jury and uhhhhh...farmer. With our principal’s Lion Card essentially being replaced with a license to...farm, I’m sure students will start to warm up to the administration’s attempts at gaining our trust back. Or else.