Fight Club Assembly Raises Awareness of Support Group

At Friday’s Mar. 27 Assembly, what began as a light-hearted and comical “yo mama” joke-fest took a drastic turn as senior and co-head of Phillips Exeter Academy’s Fight Club, Braxton Harris informed the entire Academy that his mother had passed away thirteen years ago, in 2002. Besides Harris, 17 other Exonians sat in a semi-circle, all members of Fight Club, a student-run group whose members shared one specific commonality: they had all previously lost a family member. Over the course of the assembly, multiple members of the club shared their stories and their thoughts surrounding their losses, in hopes of spreading awareness and assuaging the awkward tensions that often surround the topic of losing a family member.

Senior and co-head, Zoë Sudduth, explained why the club decided to host the assembly. “We wanted to raise the topic of death on campus and share our experiences,” she said. “It seemed like a good medium to express what Fight Club is and how death is a more prevalent experience on campus than some may assume it to be.”

“It seemed like a good medium to express what Fight Club is and how death is a more prevalent experience on campus than some may assume it to be.”

For Fight Club, “raising the topic of death” and sharing experiences has always been one of their main goals. With the entire student body in attendance, according to Harris, this assembly allowed Fight Club to “cast a wider net,” in spreading this goal.

“We were previously limited to people whom we had just tangentially heard about, so [the assembly] changed that,” Harris said. “That was the major impact we were going for, but we also used some of our speeches to explain different elements of our experiences being on campus with a dead parent/sibling.”

Including Harris, many of the Fight Club speakers discussed how often “family” comes up in daily conversations. In most cases, as some of the Fight Club members explained, they found themselves fabricating stories or second-guessing first answers in an attempt to avoid the uncomfortableness that accompanies the topic of death.

According to senior and Fight Club member Callan Malone, the unnecessary awkwardness was a specific topic that the club wanted to address during Friday’s assembly.

“Exeter is a community that emphasizes discussion and understanding,” she said, “and we want to be able to discuss those who we have lost without making our peers feel like they’ve said something wrong or overstepped.”

Echoing Fight Club member senior Marley Jenkins’s words from the assembly, history instructor Betty Luther-Hillman added that if students misspeak and offend another who has lost a family member, apologizing and knowing that they are at fault is another key step in mending conversations and reducing uncomfortability.

“None of us are perfect and we all make mistakes, especially when certain quips might unintentionally hurt someone due to their own personal circumstance,” she said. “But, saying we’re sorry is a step towards recognizing our own position and learning to try to empathize with others.”

While fully elucidating these points throughout the assembly, Fight Club managed to take the stage with a little bit of comedy in their stories, even in the seriousness of the topic. To members of the audience, like upper Aneek Mukherjee, these personal stories and the humor which accompanied them were engaging tactics to deepen understanding.

“I think they did a great job in spreading the awareness of the group and people. The humor and acceptance with which a lot of the speakers told their stories was great,” he said. “That went a lot farther with me than when someone would say ‘don’t be uncomfortable with it.’”

For upper Madison Hillyard, the assembly drew her back to when she had lost her aunt over the winter term of last year. Although it was tough for her to listen to the stories of the Fight Club members without a touch of sorrow regarding her aunt, the humor and grace with which they told it with was able to brighten up her mood.

“I think that [Fight Club is] here to help and I think that's awesome, and I respect [the members] immensely for it,” she said. “Death and loss are incredibly hard topics to talk about, and they handled the subject with grace and a little humor on the side.”

Prior to the assembly, Hillyard did not know of Fight Club’s existence and afterwards said that she wished that she had known about the group when her aunt passed away. This was another goal of the assembly: reaching out to students and letting them know about the strong and supportive group, willing to take in, listen to and help anyone. With the assembly, students are now more aware of another source of support they can seek when in need.

As Hillyard mentioned, “losing a family member” is a difficult subject to talk about. However, it is easier to confide in those who understand and can empathize. Fight Club, which began in the winter of 2011, originated from this idea of “handling and talking about death and loss.” English instructor and club advisor Christina Breen explained that this was the basis of how the club began.

“I started the club with a former student after receiving several English papers about the loss of a parent,” she said. “We wanted to create a safe space for this population to connect and support each other.”

A safe space was definitely created not only in the club, but also in the assembly hall on that Friday morning. Modern language instructor Mark Trafton recalled the assembly, describing it as both memorable and enlightening. “I could tell from my perch in the balcony that all the ninth and tenth graders were remarkably attentive to the words of every speaker, and their

demeanor in exiting the hall was unusually thoughtful and considerate,” he said.

With the “safe space” as the main goal, Fight Club has multiplied in the number of its members since its founding in 2011, and through this assembly, it hopes that more students are now knowledgeable about its existence.

“The kids wanted the community to know that Fight Club exists,” Breen said. “They wanted to share their stories and let students know there are resources for kids who have lost a loved one.”