Comparing V’s: Exeter in Line With Peer Schools

Visitations, inter-visitations, parietals and inter-rooms are terms coined by students from a variety of New England prep schools in reference to policies regarding room visits between students of opposite genders.StuCo has recently debated propositions to change Exeter’s V’s policy in discussions led by Policy Committee.In light of a meeting between the StuCo executive board, Dean Cosgrove and Dean Mischke on Tuesday morning, The Exonian investigated Exeter’s visitation policy in comparison to peer schools’ policies.The Academy’s administration outlines the rules of visitations in the E-Book. Exeter’s policy dictates that doors must be half-way open with lights on and states the official hours as 7 to 8 p.m. Sunday through Friday, 8:00 to 10:45 p.m. on Saturday nights and 8:00 to 9:45 p.m. on Fridays that precede a no-class Saturday.The E-Book clearly adds that dormitory visitations are “not intended for sexually intimate behavior,” and emphasizes the discretion of the faculty member on duty to grant visitations.Unlike many prep schools, Exeter enforces a uniform policy that is applicable to all students, regardless of grade.Andover and St. Paul’s for example, have instituted policies that change depending on the time of year and/or the grade level of involved students.“Juniors [freshmen] are only allowed visitations starting in the winter and with another prep, lowers must have the door wide open, uppers must have doors a foot-width apart and seniors can have the door closed,” Hector Cho, an upper at Andover, said. “I don’t think our policy is abused very often because it offers a relatively large degree of freedom, especially by the time you get to senior year.”Phillips Academy has considerably longer hours than Exeter with visitations running from 5 to 8 p.m. on Monday through Thursday, from 5 to 9:30 p.m. on Fridays, from 3 to 11 p.m. on Saturday and from 3 to 8 p.m. on Sunday. In addition, doors may be ajar for uppers and either open or closed for seniors.Some peer schools are also more liberal with regards to the width that doors must be ajar. At Milton Academy for example, the door must be opened to the length of the shoe. “We have parietals; boys are allowed to go into girls’ rooms and vice versa, as long as they check in with the dorm duty person and have a shoe that is about a foot long in between the door so that it is wedged open.” Jiyoung Jeong, a sophomore at Milton, said.Other schools, however, tend to be more conservative with younger students. Both Deerfield Academy and Phillips Academy do not grant full visitations privileges to freshmen. At Deerfield, beginning on October 1, students of opposite genders can be in the same room when part of a larger group, and on January 1, freshman couples can be in the same room together. “For freshmen, for the first couple of weeks, boys and girls are allowed in each others’ room only in groups,” Anya Shevzov-Zebrun, a freshman at Deerfield said. “Both genders have to be present, more than one boy and more than one girl. But for all other grades it can be couples.”Northfield Mount Hermon is one of the most conservative in terms of rules pertaining to freshmen. Students of opposite genders are not allowed to be in a private room together under any circumstances during freshmen year, and are only allowed to be in the common room together after 7 p.m. on weekends when a faculty member is present. Students are only permitted to visit peers of the opposite sex after the month of September, and only on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday nights, until the end of the school year.“If you get caught with a student of the opposite gender in your room, consequences follow,” Pablo Borra-Paley, a sophomore from Northfield Mount Hermon said. “In the worst-case scenario, you could receive a disciplinary probation.”Other boarding schools, such as the Hotchkiss School, are more traditional in the number of days of visitations, comparable to Exeter’s former policy of holding visitations twice a week.Students at Hotchkiss are allowed from 8 to 9:50 pm on Sundays, Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays from 7 to 9 pm on Wednesdays, with no visitations granted on Saturdays. In addition, the faculty members and proctors periodically visit rooms. The Hotchkiss Almanac did not outline rules pertaining to open doors or lights.“Faculty members and proctors check on the students during inter-room visiting regularly,” Peter Trousdale, a sophomore from Hotchkiss School, said. “Proctors on duty, with support from the faculty member, visit each room of inter-room visiting every 20-30 minutes. The dorm head and faculty members living in the dorm decide the number of students allowed in a single during inter-room visiting in that room.”Last spring, a number of Student Council Executive Board candidates promised Exonians a review of the “closed doors” policy. However, in response to the faculty resistance against this measure due to liability issues, heads of the policy committee, seniors Joohwan Kim and Jordan Rohrlich, aimed to tackle the smaller contentions of Exeter’s visitation policies first.Policy committee head Joohwan Kim explained why the committee has decided not to push for closed door Vs.“The most common protest against the policy [of closed doors] is the issue of liability,” Kim said. “The main flaws they see in this idea of closed-door V’s is that if the door is closed and something terrible happens” because of in loco parentis “the faculty member on duty who gave them V’s would be responsible and the school would thus be liable.”Some teachers argued that closed-door visitations would not foster a safe environment synonymous with dormitories.“I'm against closed-door Vs simply because they create an uncomfortable environment for other kids in the dorm,” Giorgio Secondi, dorm head of Webster North, said. “Walls are often paper-thin, and we don't want a prep to be doing homework while listening to his or her next-door neighbors having sex in their rooms. Dorms need to be places where all kids feel comfortable at all times.”Dorm Head Jeffery Ibbotson agreed. “I’m also opposed to closed-door policy, primarily because it involves some very dicey grounds,” he said. “If two people can be behind the closed doors and the understanding is that they’re being romantic with each other, I don’t have any way to verify whether that’s really what’s happening or whether it’s something else.”