PEA Reacts to Assault Policies
The Exeter community continues to grapple with the aftermath of the two Boston Globe articles published over the summer revealing that the Academy mishandled a recent graduate’s allegation of sexual misconduct. As the school works to move forward by addressing issues of sexual assault on campus, faculty, students and alumni alike have voiced varying opinions on the adequacy and efficacy of their efforts.
Given the short time frame for implementing changes before the start of the school year, the administration focused first on ensuring that the rules in the E-Book were more clearly aligned with New Hampshire state law. In response to a petition from students asking for greater clarity in the E-Book, Dean of Students Melissa Mischke and interim co-Director of Student Well-Being Tina Sciocchetti reorganized its structure to clarify policies regarding sexual misconduct and Principal’s Discretion. For specific discipline cases, they amended the visitations policy, added sexual misconduct to the list of major school rule violations and outlined mandatory reporting procedures in the updated E-Book.
“Their distress is an index of how much they love the school, and that’s incredibly moving to me.”
In addition, two new interim directors, Sciocchetti and Jane Stapleton, were hired to help with the prevention and handling of sexual misconduct. The faculty has received boundary training, while proctor and student listener training has been geared towards teaching student leaders ways to combat sexual assault. In the past week, social sexuality educator Cindy Pierce furthered these conversations about the sexual climate during her assembly.
Principal Lisa MacFarlane emphasized that a change in culture, not in policy, is what will truly make a difference. “We can have rules for every contingency but not fundamentally make our community better. We can spend all of our time legalistically diagnosing every detail of each rule but miss the larger purpose,” she said.
However, many members of the community still have unanswered questions about the school’s actions in past cases of sexual misconduct and for some, their disappointment and anger is still fresh, despite measures taken by the administration to move forward. In fact, the Globe articles have led certain members of the community to lose faith in the administration. According to history instructor Michael Golay, the articles suggest that “we’ve gone off the rails somehow, and that there were some fairly serious failures in our systems.” While Golay recognized that the administration could not disclose the details of the sexual misconduct cases because they cannot comment on any specifics, he expressed concern that they were acting entirely independently of the faculty. “I don’t think the administration can lay down the law about how we’re going to live our lives here and be effective without the teaching faculty and the people in the dorms being intimately involved,” he said.
For Michael Whitfield Jones ’75, the reported actions of the deans who handled the case seemed to violate Exeter’s mission of “non sibi.” Jones pointed out that in spite of the school’s stated mission of teaching goodness, “clearly it was not goodness that was being practiced” during the handling of Henry’s sexual assault allegation against another student. Noting that “Rev. [Robert] Thompson is not the only one at fault here,” Jones explained that he was especially disturbed by the deans' reported delay with New Hampshire reporting laws when responding to Michaella Henry ’16’s allegation and called into question both their credibility and their competence . “They are either telling a lie or they are incompetent. I think in this case it’s both,” he suggested. He argued that replacing the deans would be the only way to address the “systemic and historic” problem of sexual assault on the school’s campus and, in his opinion, because the school hasn’t taken this step, it “remains recalcitrant.”
Echoing these concerns, Tom Cronin ’78 called upon the school to “take responsibility for decades of issues” and added that “certainly some or all of the deans need to be reassigned.” He observed that the Globe’s revelations over the summer have been “very difficult” for many because of Exeter’s importance in their life. Nevertheless, both Jones and Cronin remained hopeful that the Academy will learn from the case and translate these lessons into positive changes in the campus culture. According to Jones, “the current faculty and students are living through what has the opportunity to be a historic turning point for the school in a very healthy way and time will tell whether that turns out to be the case or not.”
Director of Studies Brooks Moriarty ’87 said that Exeter will need to take time to heal and reform more fully. “I think it is safe to say that people are saddened. And it’s safe to say that people want us to become a better school as we work through this.”
Director of Institutional Advancement Morgan Dudley expressed a desire to reach out to any alumni who have lost faith in the administration. Though she recognized that some have “understandably been disappointed,” she felt that “the vast majority of our alumni have been steadfast in their support, and trust that the school is handling these complex issues with compassion and integrity.” She added that she hopes all alumni, regardless of their thoughts, stay connected to the school in order to help better it.
Similarly, MacFarlane empathized with the alumni who were angered by the Globe articles. “Their distress is an index of how much they love the school, and that’s incredibly moving to me,” she said.
Students, too, have shared in this distress and as a result, taken measures on their own to improve Exeter’s campus culture. Senior Claire Dauge-Roth, who founded Exonians Against Sexual Assault (EASA) following the release of the Globe articles over the summer, noted that preventing sexual assault is no easy task. While she acknowledged that she does not have the authority to determine whether their efforts have been “adequate,” Dauge-Roth felt that the administration has certainly worked to improve the school in response to the articles.
For upper Auden Barbour, however, the reaction to the Globe articles seemed “exaggerated.” Though she believes that “many mistakes were made,” she expressed confidence that the decisions of the faculty members and administrators involved in Henry’s case “really did have the intentions of helping the students involved.” Adding that she does not wish to undermine the seriousness of sexual assault, Barbour expressed frustration that “many students lashed out excessively at specific people, overreacting and unfairly pointing fingers when many of the details were still blurry.”
Given the wide range of reactions to the Globe articles and to subsequent changes on the part of the administration, rebuilding broken trust in the community will be an ongoing process. MacFarlane encouraged members of the community to embrace the turmoil as an opportunity for change. She said, “the last 50 years of Exeter’s history have come to this extraordinary opportunity to transform our school into what we all aspire for it to be, what we all know it’s real promise is, how it can fulfill, in the way that we all want it to, the values of the Deed of Gift and the spirit of Harkness. These are challenging times for everyone and I’m both humbled by that and encouraged that Exeter has the courage and the humility and the qualities of heart to move forward.”