Exonians Reflect on Inaugural Community Time

Accompanied on stage by faculty members and staff who performed skits of familiar community scenarios, Dean of Students Melissa Mischke invited Exonians in their advisory groups to discuss community values and reflect on the kind of Exeter community they wished to build in Exeter’s first ever community time.

The new biweekly initiative aims to gather the community to discuss pertinent issues in small groups during a designated 50-minute block. According to Mischke, the Community Time initiative “came from thinking about how we can improve our life at the Academy, how we can have more conversations as a community.”

Yesterday, Sept. 9’s Community Time consisted of skits featuring faculty members and deans that depicted people greeting one another on the paths, students “borrowing” personal belongings such as bicycles without prior permission and modeling respectful dining hall behavior.

Mischke hopes that the measure, while not a direct outgrowth of the Day of Dialogue held last spring, will serve as a similar platform for Exonians to explore important, timely and difficult issues through community-oriented discussions. “Last year, we kind of crammed in the Day of Dialogue on a Saturday. There have been a lot of people thinking that we need to have time set aside for building community life together and having group conversations,” she said.

Some students, however, felt that Community Time was not a success. Senior Gordon Chi felt that it was an unnecessarily long extension of advisory. “Most people just stayed in their own advisory groups so we didn’t really engage with a greater community,” he said. “The questions didn’t dive deep into any ‘big’ issues, and I’m just wondering why we had that when class could’ve ended at noon.”

Mischke acknowledged that this week’s Community Time focused on “community expectations and values” as opposed to heavier and more sensitive issues like affirmative consent, which will be the focus of the next Community Time being held in two weeks. “You can’t dive into the more challenging conversations if you haven’t built up some foundation of trust early on,” she said, explaining that the ultimate purpose of all these conversations is to “build healthier relationships with the community.”

Director of Student Well-Being Christina Palmer, who will be spearheading discussions of affirmative consent, agreed. “By starting with values, the foundation was put down for our community to engage in many diverse, rich and sometimes difficult conversations, which includes race, consent, gender and mental health to name a few,” she said.

Lower JaQ Lai thought that these topics were a suitable starting point for Community Time discussions, especially out of regard for new members of the community who are still adjusting to Academy life. “For new students who may not have had these conversations yet, I think that doing it pretty early in the year in this setting was really good because instead of having a super structured discussion, they opened it up for people to just talk,” Lai said, adding that the relaxed atmosphere allowed students to meet new Exonians while fostering discussions about basic community courtesy.

Nonetheless, upper Aiwen Desai believed that this Community Time could have been spent more effectively, rather than reviewing straightforward standards of community etiquette. “I’m not sure if it was really necessary to spend that much time going over simple rules that most people are aware of,” she said.

While upper Ervin Williams agreed that “[Wednesday] was a bit corny,” he emphasized the importance of reminding students, new and returning alike, to respect others and the community space.

“A lot of kids don’t understand that it is common courtesy to wave and say hi or to hop off your bike at the crosswalk,” Williams said. “The message got confusing at times…I would have revised some of the topics, but the overall sentiment they were trying to convey was well communicated.”

Senior Janet*, however, thought the message was not effectively communicated. “I just think if you want to talk about serious Exeter issues, then that’s fine, but don’t talk about trivial things like saying hi on the path,” she said. “It was information we already knew, performed in an unclear and frankly embarrassing fashion.”

Senior Emily Oliphant expressed her hopes for Community Time discussions to focus on “bigger issues” going forward such as sexual assault, socio-economic and class differences, race and environmental action. “Community Time could be used to talk about any number of things that would benefit all of us more and be more useful,” she said.

Mischke shared Oliphant’s hopes and has been collaborating with Palmer, Dean of Residential Life Carol Cahalane, Head of the Assembly Committee Alex Myers, Director of Equity and Inclusion Stephanie Bramlett as well as “anybody who is contributing to that higher level of examining what we are doing in this community and what conversations we need to have” to develop a comprehensive and coordinated learning experience, Mischke said.

She added, “We want things to mesh, not be divergent. It’s a team approach,” Mischke said. “Sometimes [Community Time] will have some sort of learning component. Other times, there might be more emphasis on collecting people’s opinions and projecting them outward so that people can see what others are thinking.”

The next Community Time will focus on affirmative consent. Students will work in grade level groups with trained student facilitators and faculty leaders. According to Palmer, “the focus will be understanding sexual misconduct, reviewing the affirmative consent policy, learning how sexual misconduct can be a cultural problem and [learning] strategies on how to navigate uncomfortable situations.”

Palmer continued, “These opportunities to be with another—talking, listening—is similar in some ways to when we sit at the Harkness table to have a shared moment to strengthen insight and understanding, heighten awareness, recognize and embrace our differences and develop and strengthen respect for one another and all we bring to the table: community.”