2 The Deerfield Scroll
OPINION/EDITORIAL
VOL. LXXXVI, NO. 9
FEBRUARY 29, 2012
Editor-in-Chief ANNA GONZALES Front Page SARAH WOOLF
Graphics DANIEL HAN
Opinion/Editorial ELIZABETH WHITTON
Online JAKE BARNWELL MARLY MORGUS
Arts & Entertainment HADLEY NEWTON Features DANIELLE DALTON Sports MARLY MORGUS Photography BEN BOLOTIN
Video KEVIN TANG Editorial Associates SAMMY HIRSHLAND KRISTY HONG CASEY BUTLER JOHN LEE Graphics Associate TATUM MCINERNEY
Advisors SUZANNE HANNAY & JOHN PALMER
The Deerfield Scroll, established in 1925, is the official student newspaper of Deerfield Academy. The Scroll encourages informed discussion of pertinent issues that concern the Academy and the world. Signed letters to the editor that express legitimate opinions are welcomed. We hold the right to edit for brevity. The Scroll is published eight times yearly. Advertising rates provided upon request.
February 29, 2012
Letter from the Editor
On September 26, 2011, an anonymous commenter on The Scroll Online under the name “Worthy Of His Heritage” wrote to the editorial board, “Get a grip, stop polishing the school’s fragile reputation and focus on what goes on inside.” In the nine issues of Volume LXXXVI, we hope we have brought The Scroll closer to achieving this objective. We covered and wrote editorials on a number of issues that directly affect students, as was our goal, including the implementation of the Imagine Deerfield strategic plan, the gender balancing proposal for Student Council, the Respect Forum, the Koch Center graffiti, new dormitories, Hurricane Irene, dress code and schedule changes, limited time at school meeting, a curriculum overhaul, college athletic recruiting and legacies, the reaccreditation survey, letters of reprimand, Choate Day cheering restrictions, day student inclusivity, and record-high levels of student stress. We also looked outside of Deerfield to examine issues that will affect us as we expand beyond Deerfield’s boundaries, such as Bin Laden’s death, Occupy Wall Street, the Arab Spring, the 2012 election, Palestine and Israel, sports sex scandals, ecotourism, and the Tea Party. We expanded our readership by placing The Scroll in dorm rooms and promoting our Online edition, recruiting a wide range of contributors so as to ensure we represent the broadest range and the most accurate cross-section of the student body as possible. I could not have done any of this without the enormously talented and fiercely dedicated Scroll editors, associates, writers, and photographers, who relentlessly sought truth and grammatical errors all while eating pizza, tolerating Front Page Editor Sarah Woolf ’s music, and wrangling interviewees. When trying to thank Ms. Hannay and Mr. Palmer for their patience, genius, time, and love, I am confronted with the hopeless inadequacy of the English language. To next volume’s Editor-in-Chief Kristy Hong and her board: congratulations, good luck, and in the words of Samuel Hazo via Ms. McConnell, “I wish you what I wish myself: hard questions and the nights to answer them, the grace of disappointment and the right to seem the fool for justice. That’s enough. Cowards might ask for more. Heroes have died for less.” -Anna Gonzales, Editor-in-Chief
Opinion articles with contributors’ names attached represent the views of the respective writers. Opinion articles without names represent the consensus views of the editorial staff.
The Rise of Super-PACS Super-PACs, independent spending groups that defame GOP candidates with ads funded by wealthy individuals, unions, and corporations, are affecting the outcomes of political campaigns. Wealthy individuals and corporations have the power to shape the course of campaigns by writing checks to these private groups, whose members can broadcast ads that arouse public sentiment against featured, and disparaged, opponents. The law says that GOP candidates cannot coordinate with the PACs in any way. Candidates supposedly have no say in the content of these ads and the strategies that are employed in them. Yet there are many loopholes in this requirement, such as the discrepancy of whether the candidate can publicly address the PAC (and tell them what he wants them to do) as an American citizen first, a GOP candidate second. That the nation’s richest people possess a powerful conduit to exert tremendous influence and control over the outcome of the 2012 elections greatly concerns us. Campaigns embody the nation’s values for fair politics, as well as the integrity of voicing critical needs and concerns of the American people and presenting viable solutions. PACs alter our own basis of judgment when choosing the best presidential candidate. PACs heavily focus on their opponents’ mistakes and shortcomings in ads, projecting negative tones of the opposition, and turning the GOP campaign into a competition of which PAC has more money to buy more airtime. We believe that PACs are an attempt by the rich to gain more political power and influence to sway the public’s opinions of the candidates. With power comes responsibility, so the adage goes, and necessitates a scrupulous check on the values and morals of those who assume it. As a microcosm of the wider, politically conscious world, Deerfield, too, depends on individuals in positions of power to make decisions that reflect our code of values. We hope that all individuals will prioritize the integrity of fair play, freedom of thought, and the best interests of the whole over those of the elite few.
Why Enforce Same-Sex Parietals? By SARAH WOOLF Front Page Editor Through a series of, first, hilarious and, retrospectively, outrageous events, I was recently thrown into the center of the question about same-sex parietals on campus. After the fact, I realized the greater implications of my interaction with the school authorities. Nobody has the right to demand somebody’s sexual preference, neither constitutionally nor personally. So what about the rules? The more I’ve come to think about it, regardless of the school’s obligation to uphold rules, what happened to me was completely inappropriate. But more importantly, what next? Is there any point in having a same-sex parietals rule? If there is, would any individual who came out be required to check with a faculty member before going into anybody’s room, opposite sex or not? The only options I see now are a) abolishing parietals rules or b) everybody has to get parietals with anybody, those of both same and different sexes. Is there a middle ground? We wish to extend our deepest sympathy to Michael Silipo and to his family on the death of his father
SALVATORE JOSEPH SILIPO 1919 - 2012
Sports Page Editor Marly Morgus’ take on the Internet “meme” phenomenon.
GRADES: MASKING THE VALUE OF THE DEERFIELD EXPERIENCE? By DANIELLE DALTON Arts and Entertainment Editor
Despite grades ranging from the upper 70s to around 96, grade inflation cannot be definitively labeled as the source of the narrow range of students’ grades. With a host of other confounding variables lurking in the background, there could be dozens of potential causes. Perhaps today’s students are truly equal with their peers and thus, all the grades rightfully do hover together, or perhaps there is indeed unintentional grade inflation on campus. Given the information available, however, I, like my peers, cannot definitively identify the reason as to why campus grades fall within less than twenty points of one another. The murmurs of grade inflation creeping into campus dialogue, however, signifies an issue is present. It does not signify that grades themselves are an issue, but rather that the meaning of a Deerfield education
might be lost in the trivial distinction between an 89 and a 91, realistically the difference of one multiple choice question or a simple arithmetic error on a test. Yet when grades are so close, one could argue that the two points could actually represent a rather large difference in mastery of the material. The goal of a Deerfield education is to equip students with the tools to succeed in the world beyond Boyden Lane, not to make sure that each student can correctly conjugate the verbs of the foreign language he studies or distinguish third person omniscient narration from limited third person. In life, far beyond college, I don’t know when I will need to call upon my knowledge of the specific differences between narration styles, but I do know that the skills I unintentionally picked up as I worked my way through The Odyssey or the study of statistics, such as balancing a demanding schedule or articulating my thoughts through
writing, will serve me long after I leave the Pioneer Valley. The value of a Deerfield education far exceeds the numbers on a transcript. How do you measure that which cannot be quantified? Does a 69% on my chemistry final really do justice to the skills I learned as I persevered my way through the course? When students realize this hidden value, courses shift from being centered around numbers to material, with grades becoming byproducts of learning. Murmurs of grade inflation threaten the integrity of academics at Deerfield because they steer the focus of academics towards numbers. Hypothetical grade inflation is not a “problem” that needs to be “fixed.” Rather this discussion is the perfect opportunity to evaluate academics. As we stand in the midst of the reaccreditation process and Imagine Deerfield campaign, there is no better time to ensure that academics reflect their mission.