Community Conversations Date Remains Undetermined
As part of Phillips Exeter Academy’s commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Principal William Rawson announced a program dedicated to fostering empathy in an all-school email on Nov. 7. However, the event, later dubbed Community Conversations and scheduled for the beginning of winter term, was pushed to an undetermined date later in the year.
Rawson’s announcement came in the aftermath of a protest by students this fall. During a Halloween contest, three Grill staff members walked on stage, wearing a costume of a wall with the slogan “Make America Great Again” written across the brick pattern. A protest in Grill ensued the following day, highlighting the “lack of concern for the Latinx community on the Academy’s campus,” according to a distributed statement.
Following the protest, Dean of Students Brooks Moriarty and Director of Equity and Inclusion Dr. Stephanie Bramlett wished to bring together a group of students who shared the common goal of wanting to discuss how to best educate themselves and the rest of campus about empathy. Bramlett sent out an email to the entire community in early November requesting volunteers.
The first step for the members of Community Conversations was to discuss the desired content and impact for the event. “It was made very evident by the Grill protest and other events that happened this year that there are fractures in our community,” Community Conversations member and upper Anna Rose Marion said. “So we started working on trying to define empathy and what we wanted students and adults to get out of the experience of doing workshops.”
They soon discovered that defining empathy was more difficult than they imagined. “In the first meeting, we were just trying to define the difference between sympathy and empathy… That conversation took us an hour and fifteen minutes,” Marion said.
The committee decided that they wanted more time to plan an all-school program. “We didn't have the time to get it to be as perfect as possible by the date that we had already planned it,” Marion said.
“Poorly planned and rushed activities in the past have caused more harm than good, so we want to make sure that this turns out well,” another member of the initiative, senior Grant Goodall, said.
However, some students believed that the timeliness of the initial date was important in garnering student interest. “The idea sounds good, but I feel like it might be hard to execute,” senior Candy Tantichirasakul said. “I feel like, since we put these events in an awkward time, sometimes the message isn't conveyed as well because people just want to get out. Sometimes, the event isn't as powerful as it could be because people are just not interested.”
The group is planning to use the extra time to roll out the initiative and find the best way to account for people’s varying levels of interest in initiatives such as this. Besides defining empathy and differentiating it from sympathy, Community Conversations also has the goal of sharing students’ stories. “Any story that would bring people together. You want to get as many of those out as possible so that people can start building those connections and relating to each other again,” Marion said.
Assistant Dean of Multicultural Affairs Hadley Camilus expressed that empathy is essential, especially in a community like Exeter. “I have a deep rooted desire for people to understand privilege in general and how it shapes our life experiences,” Camilus said. “My identity is layered. I’m constantly recognizing my advantages and disadvantages. Ideally, a majority of folks in this community would do the same. My belief is if this habit was widespread, we wouldn’t be scrambling every so often to organize initiatives of this sort.”
There are those who feel that the Academy has done enough to educate campus and that Community Conversations will be reinforcing past work. “We've had a bunch of workshops [concerned with] community and communicating,” senior Helena Chen said. “I think it's something that we're aware of and maybe it could be strengthened with Community Conversations.”
Tantichirasakul hopes that Community Conversations will become the open and welcoming platform that it aspires to be. “The general consensus is we talk about white and black people. And I get that because that's the biggest disparity. Sometimes a speaker will say ‘black people,’ but they mean all people of color, like Asians and black people and Hispanics and Native Americans—all of the above,” Tantichirasakul said.
In their future event, Community Conversations hopes reach their goal of aiding students in recognizing differences and learning to see past them. “We are looking for a diverse group of creative students and adults to help design these programs,” Dr. Bramlett said. “Thoughtful dialogue across difference is a skill and, like any skill, we can always get better at it through practice.”