The "Woke" Side of Assembly Hall

A resounding wave of snaps swept through the Assembly Hall on Tuesday, as Director of Equity and Inclusion Stephanie Bramlett outlined her plans for improving students’ sense of “belonging” at the school.

“Just because we talk about it doesn’t mean we’re an inclusive institution,” Dr. Bramlett said. Snaps. “The dichotomy between free speech and diversity is a fallacy.” Snaps. “Teachers need to understand that female students are not complaining about petty things but reacting to a system which grants privilege to cisgender white males.” More snaps.

If one listened closely, however, one would notice that the snaps were all coming from one side of the room.

It is miraculous how quickly Exonians sort themselves into groups and subsequently, identify themselves with this shared identity. These certain groups even seem to orient public displays of opinion so as to align with those of their close peers.

Surely, there were others sitting in the Assembly Hall who agreed wholeheartedly with what Dr. Bramlett was saying. Surely, it was not only individuals in certain friend groups who found validity in her statements.

And yet, many kept this opinion to themselves; if they snapped, it was timidly, for a shorter period of time than the snapping from students sitting in groups that shared similar ideas about social justice and equity. And to those who had been in the community for some time, it is not hard to identify who these groups were: students from all-gender dorms, active ALES members, theatre performers and visual artists.

Although it is tempting to think of our community as an organically unified whole with different opinions but shared core values, one cannot help but notice the stark difference in publicly displayed judgements of whether inclusion is important to the school. Sitting in the middle aisle of the Assembly hall, it only takes seconds to realize: on one side of the room - excitement, snaps, nods of approval. On the other side of the room - blank faces, mute stares. Even some of the seats were empty.

The scary thing is, this spatial organically-created self-segregation, if you will, is not at all a new phenomenon at the Academy. Sociologist Ruben Gaztambide-Fernandez noticed these trends while studying Exeter’s assembly hall and dining spaces nearly ten years ago. In his book The Best of the Best: Becoming Elite at an American Boarding School, observations regarding the thinly-disguised “Weston Academy” and its students, “Westonians,” still hold true till this day. In 2009, students drew out for Gaztambide-Fernandez a “map” of the different groups at Exeter - day students, drama kids, GSA, ALES - and where they usually sat in Assembly Hall. Though the exact locations of each have shifted somewhat throughout the years, the concept is still the same: Assembly Hall, like all public spaces at Exeter, draws the community together in small divided pockets of students.

Of course, this fragmentation is most natural at a high school as large as Exeter and not inherently a negative trait. To make sense of their day-to-day experience in a new and daunting space, filled with stressors of various sorts, students need an anchor in those who they affiliate with and feel safe around, whether that be because of shared gender and racial identities, extracurricular passions or dorm affiliations. The danger lies in group think, or rather, “sub-group think,” when the individual becomes biased against larger community goals because of their groups’ differing beliefs, to the point where they not only disagree with these goals - again not inherently a bad thing - but refuse to consider them altogether.

“There’s a difference between becoming friends with someone and listening to their stories,” said Dean Camilus, during one of our lunch conversations at the beginning of my upper year. You don’t have to do the one before doing the other. Though a concept to grasp, this difference is not something that everyone agrees with or practices in their day-to-day life.

Indeed, engagement with the community is an important thing and I am happy to see the Director of Equity and Inclusion prioritizing community engagement amongst her three goals. However, it is optimistic and naive to think that students who choose to reach out to Dr. Bramlett for conversations about identity and personhood are representative of a cross-section of Exeter’s community. They are not. In order to bring everyone into the conversation and not “preach to the choir,” more proactive engagement from the part of DEI is absolutely a must.