Administration Silent after Las Vegas Shooting
Four weeks after Stephen Paddock killed 58 people and injured 527 more in Las Vegas, Nevada, Exeter’s administration has not held a campus-wide gathering to address the shooting. The administration privately alerted advisors of students from Las VegaAdvisors of students from Las Vegas were privately alerted by the administration following the tragedy. The student-run club Amnesty International held a vigil in conjunction with religious services, and the administration privately helped students from Las Vegas by alerting their advisors of the tragedy. Dean of Students Melissa Mischke noted that the school responds differently to issues within Exeter’s campus versus those that impact the world.
For an issue directly affecting the Exeter community, the school’s Incident Response Team (IRT) likely intervenes. The team is made up of the administration, campus safety and members of the health center staff, and follows predetermined guidelines on how to address each issue that arises.
“We try to help all Exonians who are affected by events wherever they occur and as they happen, as best we can. We often reach out to employees, students, or their families if we know they might need extra support during a difficult time,”
For conflicts outside of campus, members of the administration, including the office of the Dean of Students, Principal MacFarlane, the Dean of Faculty and the Assistant Principal, partner with Exeter’s Office of Communications to decide which issues should be responded to and the appropriate response.
Mischke added that the school struggled with whether or not to address the issue due to Exonians’ different backgrounds, as conflicts that occur far from campus likely affect some students. “We have people that live all over the world and you and I know, the world is in a pretty crazy flux where there are things happening that are very challenging everyday,” she said. “We could spend all our time telling people about all the bad things that are happening around the world if we had to comment on everything. The school isn’t a policy maker nor a news organization so we have to think about balancing what’s going on in and what’s going on out.”
She cited the school’s response to Hurricane Harvey in Texas as an example of Exeter not publicly responding to a tragedy, but still helping members of the community affected by it. The administration allowed students from Texas to move into campus earlier or later than the scheduled move-in day, and offered them travel assistance if needed. “We did stuff behind the scenes, and a lot of times, that’s what we do,” Mischke said.
Principal Lisa MacFarlane added that the school frequently aids Exonians without contacting them directly. “We try to help all Exonians who are affected by events wherever they occur and as they happen, as best we can. We often reach out to employees, students, or their families if we know they might need extra support during a difficult time,” MacFarlane said. She added, “It’s always difficult to know when and where to publicly respond to events around us. As a global school, we are affected everyday by tragedies that take place in the world. Some are natural tragedies, made worse by poverty and inadequate systems of support. Others are caused by humans; the violence humans inflict on each other is heartbreaking. And there are private tragedies, too, that often go unseen.”
Because Exeter is a global school, many Exonians hail from Las Vegas and were upset by the catastrophe in their hometown. In the wake of the shooting, some of these students had to attend classes while awaiting confirmation that family and friends were safe. Upper Miranda Derossi commented that it was challenging for her to concentrate on academics after such a devastating event. “It was hard to focus on anything else,” she said.
Derossi added that she felt supported by the health center, which told her that she could be excused from classes if she did not feel she could attend them. “However, given the fast pace of life here at Exeter, I didn’t really feel as if I could do that without falling behind,” Derossi said.
Senior Grace Pan also struggled to focus on her courses and not her fractured hometown during the school day. “During the other classes that I did manage to attend, I couldn’t focus on anything my classmates or teachers said. I watched everyone live and laugh normally, and I couldn’t possibly let myself be happy knowing that my community at home was suffering so much,” Pan said.
In contrast, prep Josh Lum found the shooting did not affect his ability to participate in his courses. He did not find out about the shooting until the day after it occurred, but support from faculty helped him to cope with the event. He said, “I feel supported by Exeter given that my advisor and other faculty in my dorm asked me if I was okay.”
Although Lum was able to partake of his classes, he added that, in his opinion, Exeter should have emailed students to ask if they needed help after the shooting. “I think Exeter should have asked if anyone was impacted at all by the shooting and if they were, try to help them in any reasonable way,” Lum said.
Senior and Las Vegas resident Valeria Rios agreed that she felt Exeter should have publicly acknowledged the tragedy. “I think the school should have addressed the shooting considering its magnitude and the number of students from Las Vegas,” Rios said. She added that in order to do so, Principal MacFarlane could have held a brief meeting at assembly or emailed students.
Without a school-wide response, Rios felt that students were uninformed of the magnitude of the shooting. “I don’t feel that I was supported enough by Exeter. Many people at school weren’t even aware of what had happened. Besides some of my friends and teachers, I feel no one else even talked about it,” Rios said.
Pan similarly felt that few members of the Exeter community mentioned the tragedy of the shooting or offered her support. “It felt like no one even realized something so horrible just happened to a community that a number of us Exeter students belonged to. I do not blame them, because this seemed to be just another tragic news story and they have other things to focus on, but I would have appreciated more sympathy or at least more acknowledgement that such a tragedy had occurred.”
Mischke added that though she was unsure of why the school did not publicly comment on the shooting, in order to help students who may have been affected by the tragedy, the school reached out to the advisors of students from Las Vegas. “Getting to the advisor and the advisor reaching out to their student is the most important thing,” Mischke said.
She added that student well-being was her primary concern in Exeter’s response to the tragedy. Mischke said, “For me, my job is student care and safety; that’s my priority. I want to make sure that if somebody is thinking about home or if they had a friend that was there in the craziness of the shooting, they’re my priority.”
English Instructor Mercedes Carbonell attributed the lack of campus-wide recognition of the shooting to her opinion that Exeter does not have a culture of responding to challenging situations. “Here...we do not have a culture of immediate response to tragedy,” she said. Carbonell added that, in her opinion, Exeter does not always unite as a community during difficult times.
She cited assembly as an example of the school not utilizing time together to connect, saying that the community “gathers to think, or to experience someone’s story, but we don’t gather to heal and to feel safe.” Carbonell finds the administration responsible for fostering this culture. “They’re the only ones who can call a meeting,” she said. “Individual teachers and advisors acknowledge and take care of students, but it ultimately has to come from the top.”
Lower EJ Porras similarly delegated the responsibility to support students from Las Vegas to the administration. He said, “I kind of appreciated the public silence from the school about the shooting, but I think the least they could have done was [write] an email to the kids affected most by the situation, offering their condolences and [having] some sort of outlet for support.”
According to upper and cohead of Amnesty International Adrian Kyle Venzon, the lack of a campus-wide response from the administration prompted the club to hold a vigil for students who wished to unite and reflect after the shooting. Venzon said about the violence, “It took an emotional toll on a lot of people, but since we’re so busy at Exeter I don’t think anyone’s really had the headspace to actually think about it. I hope that the vigil allowed for that.”
The vigil was held on Sunday, October 22, when a small crowd of students joined Reverend Heidi Heath in Phillips Church to pay their respects to the shooting victims. The church was illuminated by 58 candles, one for each fatality. All students were able to participate in the reflection by holding a lit candle to symbolize hope in the face of adversity, and all were encouraged to speak.
Molly Canfield, senior and Amnesty International cohead, found the vigil successful in allowing her to reflect on the tragedy. “The goal of our vigil was to give students a space to acknowledge, pause and feel. It was a powerful experience for me, and I hope that it was for others as well," Canfield said.
Heath noted that the vigil helped Religious Services assist the Exeter community. She said, “One of the roles of religious and spiritual life in a community is to hold space for a community to come together in reflection and/or prayer when major events happen.” She added that students have utilized Religious Services to help them face the tragedy. “In the wake of the Las Vegas shootings, we’ve had discussion, prayer, and reflection in many of our religious and spiritual groups that meet here,” Heath said.
Canfield and fellow co-head Pedro Repsold de Sanson participated in this discussion, encouraging resilience from mourners at the vigil. “In our words we wanted to acknowledge the shooting in Las Vegas, gun violence in general, and our hope for peace,” Canfield said. She reflected that were she to add to this speech, she would want to stress the proximity of the tragedy to members of the Exeter community. “Looking back, I wish we’d mentioned how distant the massacre feels from us, but how close it is to so many people in America and on this campus,” Canfield said.
Venzon attributed Exonians feeling removed from the event to the effects of being immersed in the Exeter bubble. He added that he found it hypocritical for the community to lament its distance from the outside world while not publicly responding to such a significant event. “We say we want to branch out and get out of the mindset that Exeter is the world, but in the face of an extreme act of gun violence, the school has not taken action to ensure that its students are okay,” Venzon said.
Venzon added that, in his opinion, the administration should have notified the entire campus of the event. He said, “Honestly, probably nothing would have been enough to address the shooting, but having literally no response to it is worse than falling short.”
Despite the lack of official response to the shooting, the vigil’s shared reflection did comfort Pan by connecting her with others confronting the same pain. “I am most thankful to have a community of students from Las Vegas here with me at Exeter,” she said. Pan added that she found solace in the shared reflection the vigil offered. She said, “It helped the most to know that I am not alone, and I have peers here who understand.”