The Last Writes of the 139th Board

Executive Board

"No pressure, no diamonds,” one wise news editor of 139 has been known to say. Last January, a pipe in the Academy Center burst on the eve of our inaugural issue, forcing us to evacuate the newsroom. We rose at three thirty the next morning to finish laying out the pages, sending them off to the press despite the unexpected flood. A fitting beginning to a year of challenge and excitement for our board.

As we reported on topics ranging from Exeter’s history of racial injustice to the Boston Globe’s skewed coverage of sexual misconduct cases at the Academy, we sought to maintain the journalistic integrity modeled by our predecessors for almost a century and a half.  We sought to honor our community by examining and exposing the truth. We sought to serve the community we love by revealing its flaws and celebrating its successes.

It was a privilege working with such a passionate group of young writers and watching them grow into confident journalists ready to tackle hard news. These writers bring years of experience and a formidable artillery of talents to the 140th board. We wish them luck. We hope that they will love the experience of working with one another as much as we did, and that a year from now they will be as close to one another as we all are now. We end our tenure with melancholy, but we know that we are leaving the paper in good hands.

News

Long before we reported the dangers of rising nicotine use on campus, before we showed Phillips Exeter’s proximity to not only deeply impoverished communities but also to the effects of the New Hampshire opioid epidemic, before we questioned sports team culture on campus, before we covered the ALES sit-in and lack of faculty diversity, before all that, we were a team of three that took over the news desk just under a year ago. As we began our tenure, we expected to be flooded with work. But what we did not expect was that in our first week, our office would literally be flooded with water. We survived the pipe burst and made it out of those difficult first few weeks with a new member of the team, assembled the Final Five and soon began to hit our stride. Before long, we were headline connoisseurs and layout wizards. Looking back on our time as News Editors, we know that while the Academy archives may remember us by the content we published, we will remember our time together by the long Wednesday nights spent in the kitchen, cooking up legendary one-liners and layout-independent content, which were almost always capped by an icy trek or cramped campus safety car ride from Northside to Bancroft, Cilley and Wentworth. As we hand off leadership of The Exonian’s most important section to a new team of four, we trust that the responsibility of informing the larger Exeter community is in good hands. See Ya! BANG!! 

-Harry, Jamie and Sophia

Opinions

In our tenure overseeing the Opinions page, it has been a privilege to share the wide-ranging perspectives offered by our student community. The reason that we each took this job was because we believe in the power of words and the potential that they create for connection. It has been beautiful to watch the fusion of ideas rise from the Exeter body, each week bringing your new and daring convictions onto a public platform. During our term, we sought to keep the Opinions page a stimulating podium for dialogue by offering new and intrepid prompts each week and challenging writers to take a new angle on relevant issues. We expanded our writer-ship by implementing the Exonian/Phillipian exchange issue, wherein writers from Andover collaborated with our own to contrast the cultures of our two schools, with the hope of better understanding of our own. It has been an honor to be a part of this publication and to witness the passion for discussion that has been shared here. We encourage you to keep engaging with your peers, to share your opinions when you have them, and to speak up when you disagree. Signing off, Eleanor, Jack, and Annee.

Life

Being on this board has been the most work, and probably the most fun, of any activity at Exeter. As writers, we had no idea what we were getting into when we first signed on to be Life editors. Then, the newsroom used to seem mysterious, and we felt out-of-place. However, ever since we spent nearly eight hours there on the first day, it has always felt like a second dorm to us. In that room, we have harangued Trendwatch to please, please turn in their article. In that room, we have deleted entire pages of the paper accidentally and left in tears. In that room, we have eaten too many Popcorners, chips and pizza slices to count. Even if we walk into the newsroom as alumnae, it will feel as familiar to us as any hallway in the Academy Building.

Yet, we don’t feel a huge sadness in leaving the newsroom today, perhaps for the last time. We know that, in our future, there will be many newsrooms like this one – although perhaps not geared toward putting out a paper – they will be rooms where we spend a huge amount of time working, writing, editing, and writing some more, in the company of others.  However, no team will be like the 139th Board. Few high schoolers can claim to have produced an entire newspaper without serious reliance on adults for content and editing. We have produced over 20 papers, and that brings us together.      Goodbye, Exonian. Life won’t be the same without you. 

Sports

T'was a decent year for sports. As soon as the section turned over, we sailed the ship straight down. Each week seemed like rock bottom, but we kept one-upping ourselves. We truly discovered the bitter taste of rock bottom for the grad issue. Thank you to the rest of the board for making sure we completed that second half. The grass was much greener when we returned for Fall term. After making a strong substitution, Ashley Lin helped bring this section back to the top.

Humor

Hello readers of the humor page, the only part of The Exonian that people consistently read.

One year ago, we took over the position of humor page editors after our predecessors met with surprising and unhappy accidents in quick succession, and after Billy wrote Cedric's application for him. The three of us made a great team: Emily wrote a ton of filler so that we could get the page in on time, Billy started a controversy every week where he would attempt to get a sexual innuendo into the paper, and Cedric never showed up.

Over the past year, as many of you are undoubtedly aware, many scary things happened in Exeter and in the world outside. We were eternally grateful for our little sanctuary that the page and The Exonian gave us every week from 333s, college apps, and the relentless pursuit of Judge Roy Moore. We had a lot of fun and a lot of laughs, and we hope you laughed along with us. From our hearts to yours, thank you for letting us be a part of your week. Thank you, and God Bless America!