Exeter Morality and Approach to Discipline
To discuss the Academy’s recent disciplinary reform and any forthcoming changes, it is crucial to first define the ideology behind disciplinary action and then, to tailor the process to that ideology. I’m not focusing on “restorative justice” or any other style of discipline, but the idea of discipline itself. So, why do we discipline students? In seeking an answer, perhaps we should look to our past for some wisdom.
Our second Principal, Dr. Benjamin Abbot, preserved his disciplinary ideology in a simple phrase: “resist beginnings.” To resist the beginnings of unruly conduct, the great Principals of our school (Benjamin Abbot, Gideon Lane Soule, Harlan P. Amen and Lewis Perry) outlined their expectations for a student in essays, letters and speeches. In his 1895 essay “The Spirit of the Place,” Principal Amen wrote that every student, “once accepted on satisfactory credentials, is believed to be honest, faithful and high-minded until the contrary becomes evident.” The student is “expected to show that decent and courteous behavior which any orderly household requires,” and, “without the proclamation of numerous rules, expected to be merely the good citizen.” Ideally, the mentioned mediums would be the only ones required to communicate “the spirit of the place,” but occasionally messages must be sent through disciplinary action.
The other of Dr. Abbot’s maxims, “gentle in manner, decisive in action,” lends itself as a model for the actual measures taken by the Discipline Committee. Dr. Abbot intended and practiced the use of minimal force in lessons of right and wrong. Unruly students were required to sweep each night and, in the winter, carry firewood up from the basement. Now, as evidenced by the trends presented by the Discipline Committee in the fall, the school is already quite gentle in its manner. But with members of the Committee still lamenting the volume of work associated with their posts, perhaps some students are not learning what is right and what violates one’s honorable position at this Academy.
In the 1965 book of essays, Exeter Remembered, several contributing alumni from classes spanning the prior six decades referenced Principal Gideon Lane Soule’s maxim, “the Academy has no rules—until they are broken.” Edmund Blair Bolles, member of the Class of 1908, acknowledged that phrase might be a “frightful cliché,” but elaborated the virtues of the ideal. He wrote, “the implication is good—that a [student] of fourteen or fifteen years has sense enough to know the difference between right and wrong, or at least between what he might reasonably want to get away with and what he cannot.” While some may say that the expectation of a young teenager to know the difference between right and wrong is ill-advised, I firmly believe that most youth rise to the standards set for them. Principal Amen wrote that a student must “make reasonable effort to learn, or go where the demand is less urgent.” Exeter is not for those who don’t desire to improve themselves.
While Dr. Amen asserted that “earnest study and [honorable] conduct” were two of the main facets of the spirit of Exeter, he stipulated that “if [a student] fails to ‘catch the spirit of the place,’ [they] should forfeit the rights and privileges of a worthy member of the academic community.” When an unwilling student is replaced with one eager for our academic and moral instruction, the application of Dr. Amen’s attitude could only advantage the Academy in its goal of educating “youth of requisite qualifications from every quarter” in “the great end and real business of living.”
The rules that govern the student body are an underutilized asset in the education of morals. The rules and disciplinary processes, in a uniquely compiled form, should represent the values that we as an institution hold dear. And while we should try to reduce the number of disciplinary cases through a student body more respectful of our values, we should hold students accountable to the Academy’s values. To do that, a more perfect set of rules and processes would shift the focus from the consequences of violations to a clearer communication of the “spirit of the place.”