To Try a Thief: Adirondack Atrocities
It was with a gift of bright red Adirondack chairs that Principal MacFarlane announced Principal’s Day more than two weeks ago. Since then, observers have noted that these chairs have been disappearing from the campus quads where the administration had originally placed them.
Clearly, students have been removing these chairs from the Academy lawns. Likely, the same students, allured by the prospect of more furniture, have set up the chairs in their own rooms.
It is with exasperation and embarrassment, then, that the Editorial Board must confront this most plebeian of crimes. Those who have engaged in this “relocation” of what belongs to the entire student body have engaged in theft. There is no way around this label.
Our school’s motto is “non sibi.” The taking of the Adirondack chairs is inherently anathema to this motto, not to mention to any and all considerations of common sense, civility and morality. Stealing these chairs is reprehensible by all metrics.
The chairs were gifted by Principal MacFarlane for the enjoyment of the Exeter community, which not only includes our student body, but faculty and staff as well. There was a reason why the chairs were placed on the quads, where they were accessible to all on campus. Everyone who bears the title of “Exonian” has a claim to the Principal’s gift.
In these Exonians’ interests, the Editorial Board strongly condemns the actions of those criminals who stole the chairs, and thereby displayed a dual propensity for incredible idiocy and selfishness. What is the utility of one extra personal chair, to the harmonious chair-sharing that we all may have enjoyed? What are we but hypocrites when we outwardly talk about “non sibi” and “knowledge before goodness,” but in private shirk from these principles in delight?
In context, this may seem like a comparatively minute issue. People take utensils from the dining halls. People take. But in principle, it marks the devaluation of our covenant of “non sibi.” It implies that there are those among us who would willingly betray this institution for the cheap price of an object like a chair. A chair, of all things!
Exeter does not demand of its students some kind of blood loyalty. We do not exist to be subservient to this academic system. And yet, it speaks volumes of Exeter’s institutional unity that it took only a comfortable chair to seduce our student body. Surely, order cannot be maintained amongst a breed like this, vulnerable to the impulses of uncivilized desire.
Such weakness reveals a materialism in our generation’s psyche, which may infect our greater society should it be left untreated. An America of adult chair-thieves would also be an America of degeneracy, anarchy and fragility. Chair-stealing is only a symptom of a societal disease.
Accordingly, the Editorial Board asserts that anything capable of such future risks must be contained with a comparable severity. Punishments must be levied, and rhetoric raised against our school’s chair-stealing epidemic. We are calling for an inquisition. Conveniently, the bright redness of the chairs ought to assist in any room inspections. We hope that the thieves will be found with alacrity, and tried not before a jury of the administration, but a jury of the people.
The people will thereon address the issue. We will see if we can forgive those who betrayed us for the low bribe of a back rest. Presumably, we will forgive. Only then can we hold ourselves accountable to the standards of excellence, and to the standards of Exeter.