Boundary Training Returns to Academy

By Anvi Bhate, Selim Kim, Sophie Ma, Asha Masoudi

Over the past two weeks, students took part in a mandatory boundary training on navigating student-teacher relationships. The sessions were divided amongst grade levels, with preps and lowers attending on Sept. 29, and uppers and seniors attending on Oct. 3. A few weeks prior, faculty members participated in similar training centering on legal responsibilities toward students.

Presentations featured conversations between Attorney Djuna Perkins and Psychologist Dr. Deb Offner, and student leaders representing Exonians Against Sexual Assault (EASA), Transitions, and Feminist Union.

Perkins and Offner explained that they taught boundaries to school faculty at various independent schools before adapting a curriculum for students, at Director of Student Well-Being Christina while Palmer’s suggestion. “Students are the ones who are most affected and most impacted,” Perkins said.

Offner detailed her passion for her work. “I worked at an independent high school in Boston, and saw very personally two very serious cases of emotional violation of male teachers and young female students,” she said. “I was really, really alarmed and disturbed by what happened and what the cost was to the kids.”

She continued, “I just like the idea of preventing things from happening that cause a lot of pain. And so, just going to this and then having some kids come up afterwards and ask us some questions— I feel like if I can make this not happen at other schools, it’s really worth my time.”

A new addition to this year’s boundary training was the involvement of student leaders in the organizing process. Palmer, Perkins, and Offner invited student leaders to a conversation before the presentation. Upper and co-head of EASA and Feminist Union Stacy Chen shared, “in that [planning] process, I was very adamant about having student input within the presentation. We felt that it would be more beneficial for students to see their peers on the stage… last year there was no student input and it had been received really poorly.”

Lower Advika Verma felt the inclusion of student moderators was a definite improvement from last year. “I feel like having the students up there was a lot of help because last year the people that came were from an outside source, so they didn’t know anything about the school. People had questions about the school rules and they didn’t know how to answer them... they were a lot better at clearing up what is right and wrong this year.”

“We wanted to be a lot more clear with the language,” Chen said, “This year, we wanted to remove any ambiguity and rewrite things so that people had a much more concrete understanding of different red flag signs and terms…We wanted it to feel more like a conversation rather than students being straight up lectured or as if this just felt like a required class that they had to be at.”

When asked about the effectiveness of the presentation, prep Maya Piluski said, “I appreciate the thought behind it. I think it’s really important to talk about any relationship that’s going on.”

“They taught us about the ways to identify when a teacher can take it too far and also the fact that it’s not the student’s fault, it’s always the teacher’s fault. I feel like that’s pretty good for some people to hear if they ever feel guilty about being in that situation,” prep Siena Saavedra-Bagdonas added.

Prep Nick Limoli agreed, saying that the examples provided in the presentation aided its effectiveness. “Some of the examples were kind of obvious, which makes sense since you don’t fully know that something like grooming is happening until you actually realize it. So going over those examples was good. I think it was just overall a good thing to have just in general,” Limoli said.

Senior Priya Nwakanma shared similar sentiments, “Not everybody can recognize grooming and I think it was helpful to have it laid out for you by somebody who you could trust rather than just the Internet, or a TikTok video.”

The focus on helping students recognize unhealthy boundaries was an intentional decision from the student organizers. “One thing that we really stressed was that the student’s safety is the most important thing,” Chen said. “These types of situations are hard, reporting can be difficult, and speaking out can be difficult. We wanted to make sure every student recognized and understood the signs, red flags, how they [can be] supported, and what they could do if they see something [problematic].”

However, to students like Nwakanma, the presentation’s focus on recognizing unhealthy boundaries seemed to be too narrow. “There should have been a broader topic list to cover. I feel it mainly focused on grooming, which isn’t the only concern students have about boundaries on campus,” Nwakanma said.

Other students had concerns about the presentation’s scope as well. Piluski said, “I have to be honest, I didn’t feel like I gained any information that I didn’t already have. I think that it could have been far more in depth. There was an opportunity to talk about something really important and that opportunity was missed.”

Upper Coco Kim also brought attention to the redundancy of the boundary training. “I think that the faculty were a little bit redundant in how they spoke about things,” Kim said. “I also feel like I was being talked down to. They kept talking to us like we didn’t already know some of this stuff. And they kept asking what the students were thinking even though they’re the professionals and they’re the ones who are supposed to be talking about it.

Kim continued, “There was a section that threw me off where [the presenters] were saying all these things about grooming — very true things that are awful — but then they were like, ‘Oh, sometimes the groomer doesn’t do it on purpose.’ If your whole point is that grooming is bad, then don’t try to defend the groomer like that… I feel like that invalidates a lot of people’s experiences.”

Further, some students hoped the advertisement surrounding the event would have been better. “[The Academy] sent out one email and didn’t send out any reminder emails or any follow up emails. People basically got there through word-of-mouth,” Nwakanma said. “I just don’t feel like people gave enough notice for an event of this magnitude.”

“In the middle of the assembly, I saw people literally just getting up and leaving. I feel like that really sums up what people think about the assembly,” Kim said. “[The current redundant content] could be explained in 15 minutes, but they dragged it out to 45 minutes. We know all this and it is important and yes, we need to talk about it, but it’s discouraging people from listening if you make it too long.”

“I do think there were things that could have been changed or altered that we just didn’t know how it was going to be received,” Chen concluded, looking forward to feedback from students. “For one, [we could] make it more interactive or even more engaging. Now looking back, there’s feedback that we’re looking to implement for next year.”