The Exeter Bulletin, fall 2017

— THE EXETER FUND ANNOUNCES OUR NEW —

Donor Recognition Societies Exeter would not exist, or be the remarkable school it is today, without the philanthropic foresight of you — our loyal alumni, families and friends. To show our appreciation for your generosity and all that it makes possible here at the Academy, we have created the following donor recognition societies.

Alumni, family and friends who indicate that they have made provisions for the Academy in their estate or retirement plans are designated members of our Heritage Circle.

Alumni, family and friends who contribute $2,500 or more to the Academy in a single fiscal year are considered members of the 1781 Leadership Society.

Following are the donor recognition categories that together comprise the 1781 Society.

$2,500-$4,999

$5,000-$24,999

$25,000-$99,999

We recognize with membership in the Lion Rampant Society all alumni who have loyally given back to the Academy in each year since graduation as well as those donors who make gifts of any size over five consecutive years.

$100,000 or more

To make a gift, go to

www.exeter.edu/give

$250-$1,500 or more (young alumni)

The Exeter Bulletin

Principal Instructor Lisa MacFarlane ’66 (Hon.); P’09, P’13 Editor Karen Ingraham Associate Editor Genny Beckman Moriarty Class Notes Editor Janice M. Reiter Contributing Editor Patrick Garrity Creative Director/Design David Nelson, Nelson Design Communications Advisory Committee Daniel G. Brown ’82, Robert C. Burtman ’74, Dorinda Elliott ’76, Alison Freeland ’72, Keith Johnson ’52, Yvonne M. Lopez ’93 Trustees President John A. Downer ’75 Vice President Wole C. Coaxum ’88 Suzi Kwon Cohen ’88, Marc C. de La Bruyere ’77, Walter C. Donovan ’81, Mark A. Edwards ’78, Claudine Gay ’88, Peter A. Georgescu ’57, David E. Goel ’89, Jacqueline J. Hayes, Esq. ’85, Jennifer P. Holleran ’86, Lisa MacFarlane, Sally J. Michaels ’82, Deidre O’Byrne ’84, Kerry Landreth Reed ’91, Dr. Nina D. Russell ’82, Peter M. Scocimara ’82, Serena Wille Sides ’89, J. Douglas Smith ’83, Morgan C. Sze ’83, Kristyn M. Van Ostern ’96 and Nancy H. Wilder ’75 The Exeter Bulletin (ISSN No. 0195-0207) is published four times each year: fall, winter, spring and summer,

by Phillips Exeter Academy 20 Main Street, Exeter NH 03833-2460 Telephone 603-772-4311 Periodicals postage paid at Exeter, NH, and at additional mailing offices. Printed in the USA by Cummings Printing.

The Exeter Bulletin is printed on recycled paper and sent free of charge to alumni, parents, grandparents, friends, and educational institutions by Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter, NH. Communications may be addressed to the editor; email bulletin@exeter.edu.

Copyright 2017 by the Trustees of Phillips Exeter Academy.

ISSN-0195-0207 Postmasters: Send address changes to: Phillips Exeter Academy Records Office 20 Main Street Exeter, NH 03833-2460

FALL

“... IT INSTILLED THE VALUES OF HARKNESS AND INCLUSION IN A SETTING WHERE THE STUDENTS COULD INTERNALIZE THEM ... .”

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IN THIS ISSUE

Volume CXXIII, Issue no. 1

Features

26 Flora, Fauna, First-Years

A new orientation program is helping to build community at Exeter

By Melanie Nelson

32 In the Work Zone

South Campus construction enters the home stretch Photography by Cheryl Senter

38 Considering the Weight of History A visit to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation 32 38

inspires changes in the classroom

By Genny Beckman Moriarty

Departments 6

Around the Table

14

Table Talk with Chris Graves ’77

21

Inside the Writing Life: Lydia Peelle ’96

24

Sports: Brandon Williams ’92 and his NBA journey

44

Connections: News and Notes from the Alumni Community

46

Alumni Profiles: Joe Bain ’41, Stephanie Stebich ’84 and Marlin Bottex ’03

104 Finis Origine Pendet: “The Building Wants to Say,” by Mairead Small Staid ’06

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—Cover photograph: Claire Melvin ’18 by Cheryl Senter

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A rare quiet moment on the quad. —Photo by Patrick Garrity

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AROUND THE TABLE

What’s new and notable at the Academy

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New Year, Renewed Mission

By Principal Lisa MacFarlane ’66 (Hon.); P’09, P’13

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n a crystalline Sunday in early September, I joined the great class of 2018 at Rye Harbor State Park for a beach cleanup, part of a reimagined orientation program launched this year.

Strolling the wide sands between the retaining wall and the low-tide line, we bagged and tagged 287 pounds of trash.

Science Instructor Chris Matlack offered an impromptu ornithology class when an exhausted warbler landed on the beach; one student led a team that tugged on parts of broken lobster traps; another built a sculpture out of rocks and driftwood with suggestions from admiring friends.

Later we picnicked, flew kites and played spikeball, and sprawled on the sun-warmed stone jetty of the harbor. In this fresh beginning, we delighted in new relationships, solidified those already established, and reaffirmed Exeter values we hold dear: respecting diverse experiences and perspectives, listening with care and imagination, and striving, always, to be of service to others.

The seniors were not the only ones to celebrate that glorious day with such a gathering. This year, thanks to a generous anonymous gift, we were able to offer classspecific orientation programming for all students (see page 26). Focusing on leadership, collaboration and empathy, the four programs helped to lay foundations for community among classmates and teachers, which we will build upon through the fall term and beyond.

This programming complements a critical initiative that we have undertaken. In late August, as the entire adult community prepared to welcome students back to

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campus, we all — faculty and staff as educators together — participated in a two-day cultural competency workshop with leadership coach Robert Greene. Warm and dynamic, Robert used humor and storytelling to inspire us to challenge our assumptions about the many kinds of diversity we celebrate at the Academy, and how to better build, through word and deed, a community that truly welcomes and is equitable for all. We are inspired for the work ahead.

Already we are more explicit and intentional about our community life. Our recent Academy Life Day conversations were in part driven by themes that emerged during our conversations with Robert. We followed that day with an assembly on Exeter traditions. With help from seniors “volunteered” from the audience, we demonstrated some of the Academy’s most loved habits: how we cross the street, with gratitude to local drivers; how we greet each other on the path, with eyes raised from our screens; how we cheer each other on at games and matches: We Are EX-ET-ER. My favorite moment was watching preps from different dorms race around the Assembly Hall searching for “their” portrait of the Exonians past for whom our dormitories are named, to the cheers and directions of the older students.

We reminded ourselves that we are a community within a larger community, part of a long, rich history, and stewards for a brief time of this beloved place. We recommitted to communicating with integrity and skill, clarity and compassion. With this beginning, we animate a living Harkness. E

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Existentialism on a Friday afternoon

By Patrick Garrity

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week seems an unlikely venue to discuss the meaning of life, but the seven students in Tom Simpson’s Religion 560 class are eager to dig in.

Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground is where the Simpson seven pick up their discussion on this gray Friday afternoon. The group spent the first weeks of fall term reading and dissecting the book, which is credited as one of the first works of existentialism.

Today, Simpson has them conclude that examination by reading aloud and discussing an essay from The New Yorker titled “Can Dostoevsky Still Kick You in the Gut?” Heck, yeah, the writer contends, and the Harkness discussion triggered by the piece supports that notion. Simpson needs only to touch the tiller occasionally as the students steer the conversation. “What if our own interest, as we construe it, consists of refusing what others want of us?” the essayist asks, and then observes that “individualism as a value includes the right to screw yourself up.”

Sounds about right, the seven agree.

From Underground, the class moves on to discuss the previous night’s reading assignment: “The Grand Inquisitor,” the poem tucked inside Dostoevsky’s final novel, The Brothers Karamazov. The poem, and the novel in which it resides, have been cited as favorites of intellectuals, first ladies, poets and popes. In the poem, the title character explains to Jesus Christ why his return from the heavens would interfere with the mission of the church.

An upper from Connecticut says the poem reminds him of Kipling’s “The White Man’s Burden,” drawing a parallel between that poem’s theme of Western society’s moral obligation to rule less-advanced civilizations and the church’s responsibility to shield and shepherd mankind in exchange for his freedom.

Such scholarly discourse feels right in Room 222 of the Academy Building. The room is a throwback, with bona fide blackboards and a squadron of pulldown maps seemingly on duty since existentialism was a fledgling philosophy and the Harkness table was new to campus.

One can picture earlier generations of Exonians having similar exchanges here.

The discussion veers into comparing and contrasting Dostoevsky’s views about faith with those of the Danish philosopher Kierkegaard. Faith is a con (Dostoevsky), but continued introspection of that faith can confound the con man (Kierkegaard).

The bell tower gongs F block to a close, and the seven gather up their gear and go. It’s Friday afternoon. The meaning of life will have to wait till Monday. E

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Change Makers STUDENTS IN THE CHARLES J. HAMM ’55 L E A D E R S H I P P R O G R A M TA K E O N T H E W O R L D

By Nicole Pellaton

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n a hot morning in late July,

LEADERSHIP IN A COMPLEX AGE

Celebrating its 10th year in 2018, the Hamm Leadership Program teaches rising 10th-, 11th- and 12th-graders about ethical leadership, with a dual focus on theory and practical skills.

“Some of the students have experience as leaders back home; others do not, but they all want to learn more about it and develop their leadership skills,” explains Elena Gosalvez-Blanco, director of Exeter Summer, who selects students for the program with an eye to engaging as many different perspectives as possible. In 2017, participants came from 11 countries, and more than half received financial aid.

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14 students sporting shorts and T-shirts clamber through the arched doorway into Academy Building 129. They enter solo and in small groups, chatting, and take their seats at the room’s round Harkness table. It’s the midpoint of Exeter Summer’s Hamm Leadership Program, an immersive two-course sequence, and these students exhibit the comfortable ease that comes from many hours spent working together in class and on projects.

Having prepared for class with an in-depth reading of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” they lean in toward the table’s center, ready to share ideas about King’s strengths as a leader.

Short excerpts from the letter are written on whiteboards that circle the room: “The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be.” …

“Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” … “I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth.”

A soft-spoken Greek student launches discussion with a question for his peers: “Do you think extremism is beneficial?” From the Navajo Nation to China, California and Brazil, these classmates span the globe, offering insights as diverse as their experiences.

Antonia Unger

“The biggest surprise for many students is that leadership is something you can learn,” says Tanya Judd Pucella, who has taught in the program for the past eight years and teaches leadership at Marietta College during the regular school year.

Using selected writings by Winston Churchill, King, Machiavelli and others, students discuss leadership traits, followership, situational leadership, and power and influence. They focus explicitly on inclusiveness in leadership, including the influences of culture and gender.

The practical skills seminar guides students through a progression from self-discovery (using personality tests and emotional intelligence surveys), to studies of group dynamics and the interplay of the group and the individual. By session’s end, students develop their own personal leadership philosophy. Along the way, they take advantage of many opportunities to practice essential skills including public speaking, conflict resolution, goal setting, facilitation and team management. The fiveweek program culminates in a capstone project where teams of three and four develop and implement a project of their own design that promotes social change at Exeter.

CHANGING THE WORLD ONE BY ONE

“I’ve always defined success by thinking about the philosophy statement they write at the end,” says Judd

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Pucella. “If the students walk away from this experience understanding that leadership is not just about them, but other people, and that it has an ethical component — those are extremely important to me. Many of them come in saying Hitler was a ‘good’ leader because they equate ‘good’ with what they consider to be ‘effective.’

To counter that, we read about bad leadership and look at different ways to be bad. I’ve never had a group, whether here or at the college level, that didn’t include some who were focused initially on people who have gotten other people to do really awful things.”

“I can see the change in me,” observes Ken Kameyama, a rising 11th-grader from Japan who says his teachers encouraged him to be more vocal. “They allowed me to realize that my voice is something essential in the group and now I’m really confident to speak up. …

Everyone’s voice is so important. Around the table no one is superior.”

A BUDDING ENTREPRENEUR

a follow-up, Makyshov emailed an analysis of airline routes. “A year later I saw that one of the routes I recommended was opened,” he says. “I was thrilled.”

After attending the Hamm program, he’s intent on combining aviation and environmental science, a taste he developed at PEA’s ACCESS EXETER summer program in 2016, and he hopes to start an environmentally friendly airline. Fulfilling a two-year wish, Makyshov started this fall as a new lower in the regular session.

THE POWER OF CHARISMA

“I thought leadership was more oriented to achieving results,” says Achilleas Martinis, a rising 11th-grader from Greece who now lives in Lausanne. “At Exeter, I learned that building relationships is as important as the results.”

The Kennedys get a little credit, too. It was during a visit to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum that Martinis was struck by the 35th president’s charisma, and the power inherent in it. That same day, as the class practiced negotiation exercises in the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the U.S. Senate, he struggled to build consensus. “I learned that you should focus on the similarities that unite people rather than the differences that divide them.”

Martinis leaves Exeter with a brand-new interest: science journalism. “Exeter has shown me to set high goals and reach for them.” E

Antonia Unger loved the program’s focus on “developing yourself, growing out of your comfort zone.” Returning to Zurich, this rising senior expects to “go up to people a lot more,” and “go through life in a much more open way.”

“It was amazing sitting around the table with so many nationalities,” Unger says. “The more diverse the group is, the more creative and different ideas come together.”

As the leader of a recently launched internet startup that sells ginger shots — healthy drinks, available only in Switzerland — she plans A LEGACY OF LEADERSHIP to “challenge the other members of “At Exeter, I learned to deeply respect my team to talk more, to put in ideas the quotient of leadership.” and encourage them to take over —Charles Hamm ’55 control of a meeting.”

Unger hopes to become “an Charles Hamm experienced his first inspiration, a role model … who can Harkness table in 1951 as a summer change something even on a small school student, enrolling as a prep in fall level for people in the world.” of that year. After Harvard, he led two

AN AIRLINE TAKES OFF

At age 9, Smaiyl Makyshov ’20 dreamed of becoming a pilot.

After two years shuttling between Kazakhstan and England, where he attended school for several years, Makyshov’s sights shifted to the analysis of airline efficiencies. Precocious abilities led him to a meeting with the CEO of Air Astana, Kazakhstan’s national airline, where the then12-year-old “talked with passion about my interest in aviation.” As

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successful and vastly different careers, first in advertising at McCann Erickson, followed by banking at the Independence Community Bank. Hamm credits his success in large part to his formative experience at the Academy.

A desire to encourage students to develop their own leadership qualities led Hamm and his wife, Irene, to fund the Charles J. Hamm ’55 Leadership Program. Launched in 2009 with a curriculum unique among high school summer offerings, the program flourished. In 2011, the Hamms chose to fully endow the program, ensuring it will benefit students in perpetuity.

Hamm hopes the program will shape generations of students, helping them to “begin a never-ending process of thinking about appropriate leadership” that encourages them to create better lives for others.

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Amadou Talla

W H E N I T C O M E S TO T E AC H I N G L A N G UAG E S, T H I S FRENCH INSTRUCTOR LIKES TO STIR IT UP

By Melanie Nelson

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rench Instructor Amadou Talla attributes his polyglot prowess (he speaks four languages)

to growing up in the Senegalese city of Thies, where he first spoke Fulani and Wolof, and later French. For English, he gives credit where credit is due: to Bob Marley.

“I discovered Bob Marley and reggae music when I was 13,” recalls Talla. “I loved that music so much, and thought that there was so much beauty in the language, that I vowed to become an English teacher when I grew up.” After attending the University of Dakar, where he specialized in teaching English as a foreign language, he did just that.

Although Talla began his teaching career in Senegal, he was eager to see how other countries and cultures approached the profession. He first had the opportunity to do so in 1996, when he spent three months as an international camp counselor at Camp Treetops in Lake Placid, New York. Two years later, he returned to the U.S. again, this time as the music and drama specialist at a YMCA camp in Massachusetts. Drawn to the area and its students, he secured full-time

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MICHAEL SPENGLER PHOTOGRAPHY

teaching positions at two Springfield, Massachusetts, charter schools before landing at the Powder Mill School in nearby Southwick in 2005 where, for 10 years, he taught French and Spanish to middle schoolers. For Talla, the experience was formative.

“Working with kids that age requires a different set of skills,” he explains. “You have to be especially attentive to how the kids are feeling and to what they are saying. I learned how to be in tune with teenagers.”

While Talla loved and valued teaching at the elementary and middle school levels, he never stopped dreaming about his passion for teaching English as a second language. “No matter how successful non-natives are at learning and speaking English,” he says, “they still consider themselves learners. The longer I was in Springfield, the more I wanted to help other adults who were new to the language.” On top of a full-time teaching job and after-school coaching responsibilities, Talla launched two ESL programs in local neighborhoods.

Yet, after a decade of teaching at Powder Mill, Talla found himself feeling restless. “All of my teaching jobs have been unique and fascinating,” he says, “but I was growing eager to return to teaching high-level French literature, as I had done early in my career.”

In 2015, he interviewed with then-Assistant Principal and History Instructor Ron Kim P’18, P’20 at a placement fair in Boston. Talla was soon invited to the Academy for a full interview, a process he found refreshing compared to his experiences with other schools. Aside from the caliber of students, he explains, Exeter was “the only school that let the kids interact with me and ask questions; the only school that asked me about my interests and what I wanted out of teaching; the only school that got to the bottom of what I care about and tapped into my desire to teach colonial and post-colonial African literature.

Instead of feeling scrutinized, the message I got from the instructors who interviewed me was, ‘This is what we do — do you want to be a part of it?’ ” He did.

Talla now teaches three levels of French (introductory, intermediate and advanced), oversees 11 boys as the head of Dow House, and coaches girls junior varsity soccer. He says he loves “being able to do so much in one place,” and delights in introducing his upper-level students to authors like Yasmina Reza, Azouz Begag, Francois Gravel and Albert Camus.

“My greatest hope for my students is that they will acquire French as a language of communication and culture, something to take through life.” E

HARKNESS TEACHING CONFERENCE HEADS WEST

By Nicole Pellaton Exeter Humanities Institute, a weeklong summer professional development program started in 2000 and held on PEA’s campus, has become a popular option for secondary school teachers looking to integrate Harkness learning into their classrooms. So popular, in fact, that demand has exceeded spaces for years.

Last fall, EHI faculty floated an idea: What if we fashion a traveling version of the program?

They reached out to Aimeclaire Roche ’87, who as head of school at The Bishop’s School, in La Jolla, California, has been bringing Harkness principles into the middle and high school programs.

A visit to the day school and review of logistics confirmed it would be an ideal host, and the session launched as a pilot with no marketing other than word of mouth. All 84 places filled within a matter of days, with teachers largely from the western U.S. and Asia.

EHI West’s successful engagement of teachers from almost 40 schools — public and private — has led to the scheduling of another session at Bishop’s next summer.

Read more about EHI West, including a Q&A with Roche and faculty interviews with local station KPBS, at www.exeter. edu/EHIwest.

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Bookmark This: New Online Resources T H E R E A R E N E W A N D I M P R O V E D WAY S T O K E E P C O N N E C T E D T O T H E A C A D E M Y, I N C L U D I N G O U R N E W S O C I A L M E D I A H U B , A BETTER EXETER LIVE EXPERIENCE AND A NEW BLOG #IAMEXETER: LIVE IT. SHARE IT.

The new social media hub — fueled by the #iamExeter hashtag — is the place to find the best posts on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter from Exonians present and past.

The Exeter community is ever-active on social media, but with so many accounts — alumni, students, faculty, clubs, teams and more — to follow on a variety of social media platforms, it’s impossible to be aware of, let alone participate in, all of the conversations. The hub connects those conversations and shares them with the wider Academy community at www.exeter.edu/iamexeter.

And the hub is not just for posts from campus. Anyone who wants to celebrate Exeter or their Academy ties can be join the conversation simply by tagging their social content with #iamExeter.

EXETER LIVE, NOW EVEN BETTER

Exonians have been able to watch assemblies, sports and special events, live and on demand, at Exeter Live for the past three years.

Now the experience just got better.

Visitors to Exeter Live, exeter.gameonstream.com, will discover a friendlier user interface, including easy ways to clip, save and share moments. Additional cameras in a variety of venues will ensure viewers don’t miss any of the action.

As always, Exeter Live is free, with a simple one-time registration required to see live and on-demand video no matter where you are.

COMING SOON: THE EXCHANGE

We will soon offer another doorway to daily life at Exeter: The Exchange.

The new blog, which will be found at www.exeter.edu/exchange, will feature authentic and compelling storytelling from a variety of Academy voices. From Principal Lisa MacFarlane’s most important initiatives; to coverage of assembly; to our faculty and staff ’s favorite books; to a glimpse into dorm life by the residents themselves, The Exchange will be a place to learn the very latest about our community, both on campus and off. E

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PEA Publishes New Meditations Collection

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uring the rush of daily life, the weekly meditation series in Phillips Church provides Exonians with the opportunity for contemplation and fellowship, as students, employees, friends and neighbors gather with open hearts and minds to listen to a personal narrative delivered by a member of the community.

In his introduction to The Book of Meditations: Volume IV, English Instructor Emeritus David Weber ’71, ’74, ’83 (Hon.); P’92 calls the meditation “a fusion of remembrance and reflection” and describes how the sharing of stories encourages authentic connections. Released in September by the English Department, the newest volume brings together 36 of the approximately 280 meditations delivered in the church from 2008 through the winter of 2016. During the winter of their senior year, Exonians will use readings from this collection as models and inspiration while working to produce their own meditations in their English classes.

Members of the alumni and parent community are invited to connect back to the community by sharing in the same stories. The Book of Meditations: Volume IV is available for purchase through the Exeter Bookstore by calling 603-777-3500. E

JAMES THEISEN HONORED WITH 2017 FOUNDER’S DAY AWARD

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DAN COURTER

In May, James M. Theisen ’40, ’45, ’52, ’66 (Hon.); P’97 was presented with the Founder’s Day Award, which is given annually to a member of the Exeter community who has demonstrated exceptional service to the Academy. Theisen, who served as director of Alumni Affairs and Development for more than 30 years before his retirement, was recognized for his efforts in shepherding the school through a period of financial stress to grow the endowment exponentially. Among his countless contributions was his work as the champion of The Exeter Initiatives, a $305 million campaign that became the most successful fundraising effort ever conducted by a secondary school. His work helped transform the campus and continues to bear fruit today. The citation written in Theisen’s honor noted that he is “someone who led and built connections with uncommon intelligence, humor, grace and, above all, heart.” Watch the full assembly on demand at Exeter Live: exeter.gameonstream.com.

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Defending Evidence W H Y C O N F I R M AT I O N B I A S M AT T E R S T O C H R I S T O P H E R G R AV E S ’ 7 7 A N D W H Y H E T H I N K S I T S H O U L D M AT T E R T O U S

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e are living in a societal Sharknado,” quips Chris Graves ’77; P’13, the

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longtime television news producer cum public relations executive cum behavioral science devotee. Graves, the founder and president of the Ogilvy Center for Behavioral Science, an offshoot of renowned advertising firm Ogilvy & Mather, is referring not only to the current state of American politics, but, more broadly, to what he sees as a “death of expertise” wrought by our national abandonment of the scientific method and critical thinking.

In modern parlance, Graves is a “thought leader,” a polymath who draws connections across seemingly unrelated ideas and fields and talks a mile a minute as he tries to explicate them. He is also uncommonly down-to-earth and self-deprecating, which may have something to do with his roots.

“I grew up the youngest of five children in an extremely low-income housing project in Norfolk, Virginia,” Graves explains. “My mother was a nurse and my father didn’t work. We were just trying hard each month to make our rent of $65, and sometimes that didn’t happen.”

Graves got his first boost from his third-grade public school teacher who, recognizing the boy’s nascent talents, told him about a local private day school called Norfolk Academy. Graves applied and was admitted, attending from fifth through ninth grades on a scholarship created especially for him. When it came time to complete high school, he got his second break, this time from his parents; as native New Englanders, they were familiar with Northeastern prep schools and eager for their son to get a leg up. Graves was accepted to Andover and Exeter, and opted to attend the latter on full scholarship after an inspiring conversation about archaeology with his PEA admissions counselor.

From the Academy, Graves enrolled at Wesleyan, earning a Bachelor of Arts in

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English before commencing a long and fruitful career in media and news, eventually rising to become network chief at CNBC Asia and CNBC Europe. In 2005, he made the leap to Ogilvy & Mather, serving for the next 12 years as global chairman, global CEO and regional (AsiaPacific) CEO for Ogilvy Public Relations. In January of this year, he launched the Ogilvy Center for Behavioral Science, through which, as founding president, he is working to integrate behavioral science and communications in the service of both the business and nonprofit sectors.

As a former news producer, Graves has an abiding respect for empirical evidence and a deep concern for what he sees as its cultural erosion. This is not merely a whim. Nine years ago, he became intrigued with the concept of cognitive biases, errors in reasoning that result when humans cleave too tightly to preferences and beliefs despite the presence of contrary information. That initial flicker of interest soon ignited what Graves has described as “an obsessive deep dive of studying behavioral science every day, night and weekend; it was the curiosity I’d had as a kid magnified a million-fold.”

Such unbridled immersion has helped Graves to develop an expertise with the subject matter and a facility with its lexicon. Indeed, in the course of conversation he swivels nimbly from phenomena like rosy retrospection bias to the illusory truth effect to the research area for which he is perhaps best known: confirmation bias.

According to the abstract for a 1998 journal article

by Dr. Raymond S. Nickerson (Tufts University) in the Review of General Psychology (Vol. 2, No. 2, 175-220), confirmation bias “ … connotes the seeking or interpreting of evidence in ways that are partial to existing beliefs, expectations, or a hypothesis in hand.” For Graves, this translates to our cultural tendency to jettison “any evidence that does not confirm our own prejudices.”

It is, he asserts, a psychosocial behavior that has been exacerbated by advances in communications technology: “Look, the internet undoubtedly opened up channels and platforms that many people had previously been boxed out of. That said, it has also erased the notion of

expertise, particularly in the news industry. It used to be that news was trusted and revered. It was an expertise that one developed through study and apprenticeship and that had its own incredibly rigorous codes, standards and practices. Now anyone, anywhere, can post anything online and call it news. Conversely, that same line of thinking emboldens other people, when presented with facts, to call them opinion.”

While Graves is troubled by the pandemic nature of confirmation bias, he is even more unsettled by the polarizing impact it is having on American democracy and dialogue, and the irony that, as his hero the Nobel Prize-winning economist Daniel Kahneman says, presenting more facts seems to worsen rather than improve the behavior. “What do you do,” Graves asks, “when there is no longer such a thing as mutually agreeable evidence?”

If you are Graves, you make educating the masses about confirmation bias, and eradicating it, your raison d’être. Within his own field, Graves has founded the behavioral insights initiative at the nonprofit Institute for Public Relations and, more recently, the new center at Ogilvy. Beyond, he regularly beats the drum on television news and as a guest speaker at the World Economic Forum (Davos), South by Southwest and the Clinton Global Initiative. He is likewise a frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review, and, in 2016, was awarded a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Residency during which he developed a mobile app that helps advertisers identify potential cognitive biases.

Meanwhile, there is one other force that Graves sees as a potential foil for confirmation bias — an Exeter education. “What is happening in the Academy’s classrooms is incredibly important,” he asserts. “Harkness is respectful, but not safe. It’s an environment where kids can tear apart big, meaty issues, and where it’s OK to feel uncomfortable doing that. At the same time, the culture of non sibi is paramount as a potential catalyst for empathy, which we need so that we do not cave in to self-censorship or fall prey to hate speech. If we can scale these things up, we might have a shot, but we have to start young, because confirmation bias starts early.” E

“NOW, ANYONE, ANYWHERE, CAN POST ANYTHING ONLINE AND CALL IT NEWS. ... WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN THERE IS NO LONGER SUCH A THING AS MUTUALLY AGREEABLE EVIDENCE?”

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CAMPUS LIFE AT A GLANCE

CHERYL SENTER

JOANNE LEMBO

NICOLE PELLATON

SOULE HALL proctors Adrian Venzon ’19, Cade Napier ’19, Harrison Lian ’18 and Conor Hunt ’18 greeted new students on move-in day.

SEPTEMBER is a great time for forging new connections and reuniting with old friends.

NICOLE PELLATON

MARGARET KRAUS ’18 AND CHI CHI IKPEAZU ’18 donned funny faces during the Big Red Carnival this fall.

KALEB WASHINGTON ’20 with Physical Education Instructor Bruce Shang outside of Webster Hall.

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CHERYL SENTER JOANNE LEMBO

FACULTY MEMBERS displayed their enthusiasm for a new school year during orientation week. (Left to right: Betsy Stevens, Lundy Smith, David Gulick, Allison Duke and Levi Stribling)

CHERYL SENTER

CHERYL SENTER

NEW SENIOR Theodore Aiken showed off his Lion Card at registration.

ALAYNA THOMAS ’20 settled into her room in Dunbar Hall with the help of her mother.

CHERYL SENTER

CHERYL SENTER

DAY STUDENT John Hawkins ’20 kept PJ Horoszewski ’20 company on his way back to Wentworth.

JACK BURGESS ’21 cued up in the Cilley Hall common room.

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NEW DUNBAR STUDENTS and their parents heard from the dorm faculty team after unpacking.

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What We’re Reading W E L C O M E T O A N E W C O L U M N H I G H L I G H T I N G W H AT F A C U LT Y A N D S TA F F A R E R E A D I N G ( O R L I S T E N I N G T O , O R WAT C H I N G ) OUTSIDE OF THEIR CLASSROOMS AND OFFICES ENGLISH INSTRUCTOR TYLER CALDWELL

I’m excited to dive into Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng. I read her first novel, Everything I Never Told You, over the summer, and I fell in love with her work.

Her piercing and precise details really resonated with me. Everything I Never Told You focuses on a Chinese-American family living in the Midwest; the novel opens with the death of the middle child, Lydia, and later explores the struggles and hardships of communication and identity. I haven’t yet started Little Fires Everywhere, but the flap on the cover slip reads: “This novel explores the weight of secrets, the nature of art and identity, and the ferocious pull of motherhood — and the danger of believing that following the rules can avert disaster.”

MATH INSTRUCTOR AVIVA HALANI

I recently finished My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrik Backman, an odd but endearing book about a precocious young girl whose best (really only) friend, her grandmother, passes away. The book weaves in her grandmother’s stories of the Land-of-Almost-Awake with Elsa’s adventures while delivering a series of letters her grandmother asks her to pass along. As someone who was always a little “different” as a child, I saw a bit of myself in Elsa and I loved the unusual fairy tales. I’m also reading one or two “chapters” from Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed each night. I’ve never sought out advice columns before, but I really like how it also serves as a bit of a memoir. Her personal stories are powerful and lend her word a weight that platitudes without context wouldn’t have.

SCIENCE INSTRUCTOR ALISON HOBBIE

I just finished reading A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles, which is a

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charming story of an aristocrat sentenced to a lifetime of “house arrest” in an elegant Moscow hotel during Stalinist Russia. Full of wit, the writing is verbally playful and filled with lively imagery and diverse literary references. The tone is gently funny, the meandering plot brought to life with surprising characters and an even more surprising ending.

MATHEMATICS INSTRUCTOR JEFF IBBOTSON

On my nightstand at the moment are A Primer of Analytic Number Theory by Jeffery Stopple, the most recent Smithsonian magazine, and Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero — Scooby-Doo meets the H.P. Lovecraft mythos!

It’s a pretty entertaining read full of personal depth beyond the original Scooby-Doo. I was afraid this would be yet another dark and tragic reimagining of one of my childhood favorites, but it saved itself by pulling several switcheroos worthy of the o riginal. The characters are updated, more diverse and more than mere caricatures.

DEAN OF STUDIES AND ACADEMIC AFFAIRS BROOKS MORIARTY ’84

I like to keep a short pile on the nightstand and pick at all of the books until one of them convinces me to be faithful and monogamous.

Right now, the pile is: • Shame by Salman Rushdie • All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr • M Train by Patti Smith • Who Rules the World by Noam Chomsky • The Visiting Privilege by Joy Williams All but the first reward my middle-aged bedtime fatigue — short essays or stories or vignettes that I can savor and digest in small chunks. The first is reserved for sleepless nights. Once I’m wed to one of the others, I’ll need to carve out longer chunks of time. E

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CHRISTIAN HARRISON

HATS OFF TO OUR FACILITIES CREW

The Academy would never be able to function smoothly without the tireless efforts of our Facilities Management staff, who work behind the scenes throughout the school year and summer. Here is just a sampling of what a crew of 59 did to get the campus ready in the two weeks before school started: Cleaned, disinfected, inventoried and provided linens and keys for

800+

STUDENT ROOMS

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30 57 MAINTAINED

Organized and assisted with

ACRES

FACULTY MOVES.

of athletic fields and groomed 4 acres of synthetic turf at Phelps Stadium and Hatch Field

200 SEVEN MOVED

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PAINTED

PIECES OF FURNITURE

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SHAMPOOED

EVERY CARPET

and stripped and refinished floors as needed in dorms and public buildings

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MAINTAINED

3 MILES of cross-country trails

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CLEANED

25

athletic venues with field lines

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SPREAD 55 YARDS OF BARK MULCH 100+

including all bathrooms, common rooms, kitchens and laundry rooms and sanitized the floors and walls of

on planting beds

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EXETER DECONSTRUCTED T H E S C H O O L W E L O V E I N D E TA I L

WILLIAMS HOUSE The oldest dorm on campus, WILLIAMS HOUSE had its start as an experiment in residential living in 1852. Hoping to better provide for students of limited means, the Academy Trustees voted to lease the building to students and allow them to organize a low-cost “boarding club,” which served as the school’s first unofficial dormitory. Lodging costs were nominal and board cost $1.42 per week.

Known as “The Commons,” the Academy’s first dining hall occupied an entire floor of the residence. The experiment in dorm living was so successful that the Trustees later voted to construct a larger, more comfortable dormitory. Shortly after Abbot Hall was erected in 1855, Williams House fell into disuse and was sold.

The Academy repurchased the three-floor, 30-room building in 1906, planning to remodel it for use again as a dormitory. Improvements to Williams House included hardwood floors, a two-story addition and modern bathrooms equipped with bath and needle showers.

Advertisements from the day touted the therapeutic value of needle showers, which featured several rows of sprays in addition to the overhead shower head. The state-of-the-art amenities were typically found only in private clubs and luxury hotels.

Reopening in the fall of 1907, Williams House could accommodate one instructor and up to 18 students.

The basement held a faculty common room, a common room for students, The Exonian office and the office for the superintendent of grounds. In a Sept. 18, 1907, issue, The Exonian reported: “The Williams House, in the ’50s the Academy’s first dormitory, has been practically rebuilt and enlarged, and now furnishes most attractive quarters.” Today, “Will House,” as it is affectionately known, houses 10 students and one instructor in one of Exeter’s first all-gender housing facilities. The Exonian now has its offices in the Phelps Academy Center.

An Exonian article from Oct. 10, 1908, reported that residents of Williams House had established a slush fund for purchasing magazines for the common room. It’s unknown which magazines the residents preferred, but an announcement in the Nov. 21, 1906, Exonian lists some of the journals available in the Class of 1945 Library, including the Saturday Evening Post, Scientific American and Harvard Lampoon. A single issue of the Post cost 5 cents in the early 1900s.

Before its first stint as a dormitory in the mid-19th century, Williams House was used by brothers John and Benjamin Williams, who ran a successful printing company out of the building from 1818-45. J. and B. Williams Printers produced 250,000 volumes annually in its heyday. The Academy Library’s Special Collections holds copies of 85 different J. and B. Williams titles, including such gems as The Bandit’s Bride; or, The Maid of Saxony, a Romance by Louisa Sidney Stanhope (1837, reprint); Hume and Smollett’s History of England by David Hume and Tobias George Smollett (1828, reprint); and The Wonders of the Universe; or Curiosities of Nature and Art (1842), pictured (left).

S P E C I A L T H A N K S TO P E T E R N E L S O N , TO M W H A R TO N A N D T H E E X E T E R H I S TO R I C A L S O C I E T Y; P H OTO S C O U R T E SY O F P E A A R C H I V E S A N D S P E C I A L C O L L E C T I O N S.

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Finding the Universal in the Particular A C O N V E R S AT I O N W I T H A U T H O R LY D I A P E E L L E ’ 9 6

By Daneet Steffens ’82

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ANDREA BEHRENDS

ydia Peelle ’96 was already a multi-awardwinning short story writer when her debut novel, The Midnight Cool, was published earlier this year, but the authorial poise that runs so elegantly throughout her new book is still striking.

Ostensibly the tale of Billy and Charles, two horse traders (well, traders in anything they can lay their hands on, really) in 1916 Tennessee, The Midnight Cool also trades comprehensively in the most universal of elements, from migration and income gaps to love and war. As talk of women’s suffrage, local temperance and World War I battles swirl around them, Billy and Charles become invested in the mules that are needed on the killing fields of Europe. As Charles falls for Catherine, daughter of the town’s wealthiest man, this also becomes a book about the stories people tell each other to feel better about themselves, to cope, to live.

Q: I understand that you actually met your husband, Ketch Secor ’96 of the band Old Crow Medicine Show, when you were both preps?

Peelle: I did. I did. The greatest gift that Exeter gave me.

Q: What else did you gain from your Exeter experience?

Peelle: Exeter, more so than college and graduate school, shaped my education. One thing that stuck out for me — I mean, I had teachers at Exeter who I think about on a daily basis — but the memory that came back to me so clearly this morning was of sitting in assembly listening to Allen Ginsberg play the squeeze box and recite poetry, and I thought, “How many people get to do that in high school?!” I remember waking up the morning after his performance and it was like the whole world had changed.

Q: When it comes to your fiction, do you have a particular approach or writing process? What is your starting point?

Peelle: For me, so much of it is an exploration and an inquiry — I don’t have a plan. The Midnight Cool took seven and a half years of writing, and it looks, you know,

nothing like the first draft. But it’s the same story. My first question or inquiry was about being a woman in a man’s world in 1916. And what happened was that the men in the story took over, and the women were just literally eclipsed in the telling of the story. When I realized that was happening I thought, “Well, that’s reflective of how their lives would have been,” so it became the men’s story in a very organic way, even though my first question was about the women.

Q: You do have the character of Catherine, whose voice comes through more and more as the book goes along. At first, I thought, “Oh, she’s just someone that Charles is in love with.” But ultimately, she’s the one who stands up to, well, everything, and kind of even shapes the end of the story.

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Peelle: Yeah, Catherine is the heart of the book for me. Of course, she can only do so much, not only as a woman in the early 20th century but also being a Southern woman and an affluent Southern woman — she just has so many ties that bind her. In all of the reading about that era that I did for this book, I was just so taken by the plight of women, the plight of AfricanAmericans, the plight of all of the oppressed in this country at that time of war, and how they still managed to have some agency because it was a time of war.

Q: The title refers to a mysterious, dangerous horse, whose backstory broke my heart into a million little pieces. This is a book of big, sweeping, universal elements — haves and have-nots, immigration, persecution, fear-mongering, first love — yet it’s so specific to its time and place as well. How did you maintain that beautiful balance?

Peelle: Our times are very similar to the times preceding America’s entering into World War I; it was actually very striking to find these correlations as I was researching that period. But there was also a point where the research had to stop and I had to follow the story and follow my instinct. And so much of what’s in that book about those issues you bring up are the things that I have seen living in rural Tennessee for almost 20 years. I think there are perennial problems in the human heart, and this book looks at some of them; I always think about how we approach the universal through the specific, so I just picked a particular period and dug deep. But my hunch is that I could pick any time period and dig deep and come up with those same perennial problems.

Q: I loved the slogans in the window of the town’s laundry: “We clean everything but your reputation.” “We will dye for you.” “We smooth everything but your family troubles.” “A time to rip and a time to sew.” Did you make those up?

Peelle: I’m glad you like them. In my research of this time period, I discovered a successful African-American-owned-and-operated laundry business in the town that my fictional Richfield is based on, and I worked it into the book: I got half of the slogans from the real owner, clearly a comic, and then, inspired by him, I made up the other half. I spent a lot of time in the Tennessee state archives just reading old newspapers, and I got the best stuff from the ads. But the whole experience was great — I mean, I feel like these people, my characters, are friends of mine. It was seven years of living in this time period, in my own region, in my own backyard, and it was such a beautiful way to be engaged with history. I tell people it was the closest you could get to being a time traveler, because I literally lived in that time. ...

There was such a resonance with current events and the things I was reading about.

Q: Is that why you set your work there, because you feel an affinity for it?

Peelle: That’s a good question. It never occurred to me to set this book anywhere other than Tennessee, I think because I’m so interested in the extremely complex problems of Southern history. Also, I’m not a Southerner, I’m a Yankee who moved south 20 years ago, so it’s been my way of engaging with it as my home, writing about it.

Q: What’s next for you?

Peelle: I’m working on a new book! It’s set in 1890s San Francisco as well as in the present, and it’s been this wonderful, freeing thing to actually write about my own time. I’m researching in San Francisco at the Maritime Research Center in Fort Mason, and it’s so beautiful to sit there and look at the Golden Gate Bridge and read old maritime history books. But the thing I’m really excited about is that all the heroes in this book are women, so I’m loving that. I had to sort of look at the world through men’s eyes, because in all the books we read in the white male canon, the men are the heroes; it’s part of my DNA to write about men because I read about men. With The Midnight Cool, I kind of got that out of my system; now, writing about women, it’s like this whole new world has opened up. E

“I THINK THERE ARE PERENNIAL PROBLEMS IN THE HUMAN HEART, AND THIS BOOK LOOKS AT SOME OF THEM ...”

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E XO N I A N S

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Alumni are encouraged to advise the Bulletin editor (bulletin@exeter.edu) of their own publications, recordings, films, etc., in any field, and those of classmates, for inclusion in future Exonians in Review columns. Please send a review copy of your published work to the editor to be considered for an extended profile or review in future issues.

Works can be sent to: Bulletin Editor, Phillips Exeter Academy, 20 Main Street, Exeter, NH 03833-2460.

ALUMNI

1969—James “Jim” Peterson. Count Down: The Past, Present and Uncertain Future of the Big Four Accounting Firms [second edition]. (Emerald Publishing, 2017) 1969—Robert “Bob” Rubin. Walkers: Hollywood Afterlives in Art and Artifact [film and book]. (Museum of the Moving Image, 2016) — Avedon’s France: Old World, New Look. (Abrams, 2017)

1943—Waldo Heinrich. Implacable Foes: World War II in the Pacific, 1944–45. (Oxford University Press, 2017)

1991—Claudia Putnam [former Bennet Fellow]. “The Battle of Brintellix” [poem]. IN Rattle 56. (Summer 2017) —“Headline: Mothers Given Back Babies They Thought Dead” [poem].

IN Spillway 25. (2017) 1998—Kaitlin Solimine. Empire of Glass. (Ig Publishing, 2017) 2001—Kathryn “Katie” Farris.

Thirteen Intimacies [chapbook].

(Five Hundred Places, 2017)

1947—Philip McFarland. John Hay, Friend of Giants: The Man and Life Connecting Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, Henry James, and Theodore Roosevelt. (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2017) 1948—Oliver E. Cobb. Cuentitos Cortos / Short Stories. (Third Place Press, 2017) 1955—Charles D. Ellis. The Index Revolution: Why Investors Should Join It Now. (Wiley, 2016) 1958—Bruce Lawrence. The Koran in English: A Biography. (Princeton University Press, 2017) 1959—John Dickey. Adrift Among the Stars [narrative poem]. (JoSara MeDia, 2017)

1975—Walter Stahr. Stanton: Lincoln’s War Secretary. (Simon & Schuster, 2017) 1976—Deborah “Debby” Montgomery Johnson. The Woman Behind the Smile: Triumph over the Ultimate Online Dating Betrayal.

(Parker House Publishing, 2016) 1984—Evan R. Goldischer, editor.

Practice Management for Urology Groups: LUGPA’s Guidebook.

(LUGPA, 2017)

1962—Brian B. Kelly. Our American: A Romance of Moscow. (CreateSpace, 2017)

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FAC U LT Y/ F O R M E R FAC U LT Y Erica Plouffe Lazure. “On the Way Out” [flash fiction]. IN National Flash-Fiction Day 2017 Anthology.

—“Last Chance, Tributaries” [flash essay]. IN The Fourth River Journal.

(March 2017)

1965—Charles Warren. Looking with Robert Gardner. (SUNY Press, 2016)

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2002—William Deringer. Calculated Values: Finance, Politics, and the Quantitative Age. (Harvard University Press, 2018)

Sue Repko. “To Suckle on Fear” [essay]. IN The MacGuffin. (spring 2017)

1963—William “Bill” Schubart. Lila & Theron (Simon & Schuster, 2017)

1969—Michael Fossel. The Telomerase Revolution [reprint]. (BenBella Books, 2017)

2001—Jennie Magiera. Courageous Edventures: Navigating Obstacles to Discover Classroom Innovation.

(Corwin Press, 2017)

1988—Laura Fedolfi. Revealing Hannah: The Myth of Arachne.

(Illuminated Myth Publishing, 2016)

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Hoop Dreams BRANDON WILLIAMS ’92 HAS FOLLOWED HIS LOVE FOR BASKETBALL FROM RURAL LOUISIANA TO AN NBA FRONT O F F I C E . B U T H E’S N OT D O N E C L I M B I N G.

By Craig Morgan ’84

B

randon Williams calls himself the NBA’s version of Frankenstein.

“Over the last 21 years I developed through executive mentors, ‘Taking a piece of this, adding a piece of that,’” Williams ’92 says of his myriad work experiences. “Without a blueprint when I started, I may have just tripped into being the front-office type.”

Maybe so, but each of the work pieces Williams acquired along the way helped shape his approach and helped lead him to his latest job as the assistant general manager for the NBA’s Sacramento Kings.

Williams spent a decade bouncing around leagues and nations as a player after he graduated from Davidson College in 1996. He had “cups of coffee” in the NBA with the Golden State Warriors, San Antonio Spurs and Atlanta Hawks. He played in the Continental Basketball Association and the National Basketball Development League for La Crosse, Huntsville, Sioux Falls and Rockford, and played abroad for teams in Greece, France, Germany and Israel. Seeing the game at so many levels and in so many cultures honed his eye as a talent evaluator.

Williams worked in the NBA’s league offices from 2005 to 2013, starting in its Social Responsibility and Players Program department and climbing to become associate vice president of basketball operations. Among his many achievements, Williams helped tutor rookies on the pitfalls of NBA life, helped create the league’s wide-ranging “Respect for the Game” policy that imposed a dress code and a code of conduct, and was instrumental in the creation of the NBA Replay Center in Secaucus, New Jersey.

During those eight years he also got married, had a second child, Remington, now 5 (Bailey, 13, is the other), and earned a law degree from Rutgers in 2012 to elevate his profile and deepen his understanding of the league’s decision-making process and rules structure.

“When referring to the power structure, I had often heard around the business that NBA stands for Nothing But Attorneys, and I was fascinated,” Williams says.

In 2013 he took a position with the Philadelphia 76ers, working under general manager Sam Hinkie, that included running the Delaware 87ers, the team’s development league club. When the Sixers hired USA Basketball chairman Jerry Colangelo as chairman of basketball operations, Colangelo and his son, Bryan (now Philadelphia’s GM), began a major overhaul of the front office. Williams was one of the few employees the Colangelos retained. Under Jerry Colangelo, one of the game’s most respected minds, Williams says his knowledge grew exponentially.

“This game is full of A-types,” Williams says. “It’s the very nature of what we do. In that environment where everybody wants to be on top, be the best, be the biggest, I learned a lot just listening to Jerry. It wasn’t always a tutorial on ‘Here’s how you negotiate with a tough agent.’ Sometimes, it was a story about how he’d negotiated with a frustrated agent and player to find a reasonable compromise.

He has so much information. He’s such an impressive man.”

That opinion cut both ways.

“In my time with him, I would say I was impressed,” says Jerry Colangelo, who was USA Basketball chairman from 2009 to 2016 and owned the Phoenix Suns from 1987 to 2004. “He’s a very articulate, knowledgeable guy who I thought had a pretty good résumé as a player, and of course his education and work experience prepared him for more and more responsibility. He was definitely an individual

“THIS GAME IS FULL OF A-TYPES. IT’S THE VERY NATURE OF WHAT WE DO.”

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COURTESY OF THE SACRAMENTO KINGS

you could pinpoint and say, ‘He has a real upside to his game.’”

At Exeter, there were times when Williams wondered if he belonged in the game at all. He grew up a straight-A student and a star basketball player in Collinston, Louisiana (population 264), where his mother was a teacher and principal. Once he left, though, he understood how limiting his upbringing had been.

“It was a depressing environment and still very closed-minded,” Williams says.

“David Duke was running for governor and we effectively had separate proms in ’92.”

When Louisiana dropped to last in the national education rankings and his parish ranked second to last in the state, his mom decided Brandon had to get out. His uncle had graduated from Exeter in 1976.

Without ever having seen the Academy, Williams enrolled upon his acceptance, hopped on a bus, and made what he remembers as a 48-hour drive with multiple stops between the Deep South and the northern reaches of New England.

“I struggled early,” he says.

“It was culture shock, climate shock, shock at working at that pace, and I was not nearly as good at basketball as I thought I was.”

Williams thought about leaving during his first semester, but with the help of friends and mentors, he grew into his new environment. He learned to manage the Academy’s rigorous academics. Following an on-campus screening of Spike Lee’s 1989 movie Do the Right Thing, he learned to openly discuss issues of race that he had never dared to discuss with anyone but his mother. He made white friends for the first time in his life. He earned a starting role on the basketball team. He found a sense of belonging.

That combination of personal drive and listening to others has continued to serve him in his professional career. “With all of these things I’ve done with my education or playing or player development, teaching rookies to

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transition to the NBA, business, marketing, international camps and clinics — some of it was my own doing, some of it was through encouragement, some of it was ideas people had that would be important for my growth,” Williams says. “I’ve had so many mentors, so when people say it was easy becoming a basketball executive because I played, I’ll tell you that at this stage, by the time I got to management, playing was just a factor. You couldn’t separate all these experiences and influences and say one was more important. They were all important.”

When Scott Perry left the Kings organization to accept his dream job as general manager of the New York Knicks, Kings GM Vlade Divac went looking for someone with a broad range of experiences to become his new assistant. Williams was an ideal candidate.

“His background, finishing law school and being a player and having experience with the league and working with the G-league, was what we were looking for,” Divac said. “He knows basketball, he has a lot of contacts around the league and he’s a very bright person, very educated. He fits our team very well.”

Williams isn’t shy about his next ambition. He wants to be one of the NBA’s 30 general managers and he knows this position sharpens him for that role. He will drive trades with teams and contract negotiations with players’ agents. He will grow as a leader, through the day-to-day management of staff and the operations of an NBA team.

“It’s hard to excel at this job without being comprehensive in skill set and approach,” he says.

With all that Williams already brings to the table, one of the game’s most accomplished men believes he is on a fast track to his ultimate goal.

“If he stays on course and continues to grow, he’ll have a great shot at being a GM,” Jerry Colangelo says. “He’s cordial, he’s hard-working, he’s knowledgeable, he understands the game — it’s all positives with Brandon.” E

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FLORA, FAUNA, FIRST-YEARS H O W A N E W O R I E N TAT I O N P R O G R A M I S H E L P I N G T H E E X E T E R C O M M U N I T Y M O R E F U L LY E M B R AC E H A R K N E S S L E A R N I N G A N D L I V I N G

By Melanie Nelson

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Dan Hummel leads his group of preps in an orientation activity at the Browne Center.

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t’s a crystal-clear Sunday morning in early September as the sound of wheels on crushed gravel slowly becomes audible. Soon, four long, lumbering First Student school buses roll through the gates of the Browne Center for Innovative Learning. Situated on a gorgeous wooded property adjoining the Great Bay Estuary in Durham, the center, just 20 minutes from Exeter’s campus, is a renowned experiential education site affiliated with the University of New Hampshire.

As the buses’ doors creak open, 203 students, all members of the class of 2021, spill out. Carrying backpacks and bagged lunches, they amble down to an open field. Here they are greeted warmly by a cadre of purple-clad Browne Center staff members, many of whom work full-time elsewhere as guidance counselors or social workers. Each is considered a master facilitator, fluent in the language of engagement.

Instructed to gather in a circle, the preps nervously assemble. A lanky, stubbled

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facilitator commences the program by introducing the day’s leitmotif. Thrusting a pointer finger into the air indicates a brilliant idea, he says, while a spread palm is a proxy for an open mind.

Pursing his lips and letting his finger fall to his waiting palm, he makes a warbly whistling noise like a spent bottle rocket falling back to earth. “That’s the sound of a great idea meeting an open mind.”

Next, and as if to replicate a Harkness classroom, the students are divided into groups of 12.

Interspersed among them are Exeter instructors and a handful of alumni from the class of 1971.

The latter, inspired and organized by classmates Sam Perkins and Bill Rawson, have joined forces with the class of 2021 to pilot a symbiotic partnership intended to build over the next four years as the class of ’71 prepares to celebrate its 50th reunion in the same year that the class of ’21 graduates.

All have journeyed to the Browne Center to participate in an enhanced orientation program meant to foster community and collaboration before the fall term is officially underway. Back at campus and over at Rye Harbor State Park, lowers, uppers and seniors are engaging in their own class-specific team-building activities. The programming, new and welcome at Exeter, has been made possible by the Class of 2018 Exonians Connect and Explore Fund, established by an anonymous donor this year, and is meshing with the Academy’s broader efforts to create a more holistic learning community.

BUILDING CLASS SPIRIT AND COMMUNITY

For Dean of Students and Science Instructor Melissa Mischke, the work of planning this year’s orientation program began last spring, just about the same time that members of the class of 2021 were notifying the Admissions Office of their intention to attend. “When news of the gift was shared, we put together a proposal highlighting ways that we might open school differently,” she explains. “We do a lot of dorm-based events at Exeter, but not a lot of class-based programming, and especially not to the scale of a Anna Jacobowitz ’21 whole day. This gift gave us the opportunity to rethink orientation through the lenses of and fellow preps put class and school identity.” themselves in numerical With tremendous support from her own team and from Director of Student Activities order using hand signals Joanne Lembo P’21 and staff, Mischke and company set about brainstorming opening-ofand giant playing cards. school activities that might be particularly valuable and engaging for each class. As an example, she cites the upper class: “Uppers traditionally come in with this mindset that the year ahead is going to be really challenging and stressful, so I was interested in exploring how to rejigger that message. That led to us inviting Ed Gerety, a local youth speaker and leadership trainer, to come to campus for a day to work with the class of 2019.” Lowers, meanwhile, participated in team building and problem-solving through the interactive Playfair program, while seniors, in collaboration with the Blue Ocean Society for Marine Conservation, spent the day at Rye Harbor State Park picking up trash and savoring the seaside.

Mischke stresses that these new, class-specific orientation activities are intended to set the tone for the academic year ahead and, through carefully designed and facilitated programming, “instill

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in students a sense of respect for themselves, one another, and the greater living and learning community of which they are an important part.”

FOUNDATIONS

With a chorus of crickets as background music and little clouds of Deep Woods OFF! billowing into the blue sky, the smaller groups disperse with their Browne Center facilitators. Each is led to a spot on the grounds that allows for quiet and privacy as the team-building exercises get underway. Through a series of fun and thought-provoking games that vary depending upon the group leader and dynamics, initial trepidation soon gives way to sharing and laughter.

“We always begin with activities that are choice-based — high-engagement, but Prep Cheikh Fiteni low-consequence,” explains the Browne Center’s youth and student programs coordinawatches a Browne Center tor, Jeff Frigon. “It gives the kids a chance to get moving and be silly before we delve into facilitator introduce a more complex programming.” Frigon and his colleagues speak from experience. Now team-building game.

40 years old, the Browne Center is considered an international leader in hands-on, innovative learning. Adds Frigon: “The brain science is just catching up to what we have seen realized in our work here, which is that physical movement, laughter and appropriate contact all release healthy brain chemicals that, in TRICKS OF THE TRADE turn, reduce anxiety and increase learning and connection.”

Beth Sayers is the kind of buoyant, efficient person you’d want with you in a moment of crisis. Upbeat, COMPASSES yet centered, she is a modern-day For English Instructor Patty Burke Hickey, who teaches prep English, the Mary Poppins, her carpet bag a Browne Center program was “fabulous” for the way it united the students in her large, orange paint bucket from group and primed them for the journey ahead, including a Harkness demonstrawhich she pulls the gadgets of her tion in Fisher Theater the following day and their first full day of classes. trade. To begin, though, she asks “The Browne Center staff really did their research, and we had this amazher charges to pretend they are ing group leader named Greg who led us in activities that required more and windup toys. Clasping hands, team more teamwork throughout the morning,” Burke Hickey explains. “He really members move their arms in wide got the students working together to problem-solve for an end goal. circles, spring-loading for the work “Later, at lunch, he gave the group a big sheet of paper and asked stuahead. “What will you contribute dents to write about how what we’d been doing that morning might transto the group today?” she inquires late to what we’d be doing around the Harkness table in the days to come. of each student. “An open mind Everyone contributed to the diagram, and Greg was good about asking for and bright ideas,” chirps one prep. concrete details to support the ideas that were offered. I think the students “Good listening,” says another, came away with the sense that they would be learning together at Exeter, more reservedly. “Great,” Sayers rather than just working together. In fact, I think they were oriented in the says. “Your job as we go through truest sense of the word to how we learn in a community, and that they will the day is to reinforce for your be able to apply those lessons to their lives outside the classroom, too.” windup partner the skills they’ve said they’ll bring to our work and CONNECTIONS to compliment them when they put Andrew McTammany loves teaching chemistry at Exeter, but with classes those skills into action.” mainly populated by lowers, he seldom gets a chance to interact with first-year students. This is why he was delighted to participate in the prep

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English Instructor Patty Burke Hickey enjoys some laughs with her orientation group.

CONCORDANCE

With his shock of white hair and sparkling eyes, Dan Hummel is avuncular in a way that is eminently welcoming. A seasoned middle school guidance counselor, he is proficient in the idiom of teens, including the nonverbal nuances of the eye roll and sigh. For his first small-group activity, he holds up a hacky sack that has been decorated to resemble a tiny planet Earth and instructs his students to try to estimate how long it will take to pass the sack to and fro, such that each prep receives and tosses it one time. “Before you throw the ball, you must thank the person who threw it to you, and then say the name of the person to whom you are tossing it,” he adds. Wildly varied guesses as to how long this exercise might take are posited, until Hummel encourages the team to come to consensus. “What does consensus mean?” he asks.

Silence, and then someone murmurs “agreement.” “Right!” Hummel exclaims. “Now, don’t forget the eye contact. It signifies ‘I’m right here with you.’”

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program at the Browne Center. “I don’t work with ninth-graders at all, so it was really good to get to know students I don’t come into contact with on a daily basis,” he explains. A 2004 graduate of the Academy, McTammany liked the way Browne’s facilitators incorporated the Harkness philosophy into their team-building activities and ropes course. “I thought it was a great bonding experience for the preps,” he says. “In addition to bringing them together as a class, I think it instilled the values of Harkness and inclusion in a setting where the students could internalize them and then bring them back to school. Each element the facilitator introduced built upon the previous one, so that the students first got to know each other, then built up trust, and by the end were completely comfortable together. It was very well executed and awesome to see.”

MULTIPLICITIES AND REVERBERATIONS

“I thought it was brilliant,” enthuses Classics Department Intern Noël Grisanti of the Browne Center program. Having arrived at the Academy just a few weeks prior, Grisanti was, like the firstyear students with whom she engaged at Browne, still adjusting to the cadence of life at Exeter. “I think it provided a great opportunity to lay the foundation for the class of 2021, and I feel like the trip is going to become a touchstone for the class as they go through Exeter,” she says. “I think friendships that may not have emerged otherwise could come from this experience.”

According to Grisanti, the “from every quarter” ethos also was much in evidence. “Just in my group alone, which was a random

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Preps begin their day in a circle, with an exercise that demonstrates when a great idea meets an open mind.

THE VERNACULAR OF FELLOWSHIP

Julia Stifler is studying to become an adventure therapist, a field that combines individual and group therapy with the kind of nature-based experiential learning the Browne Center promulgates. Wearing a baseball cap over her short hair, she might be mistaken for an older Exeter student, and her steady, authentic demeanor appears to put her preps at ease. The activity she is guiding her team through involves enacting four different social scenarios that could conceivably unfold in the hallways of an Academy classroom building, and she unpacks them sequentially, in easily digestible bits. “First, let’s pretend you are walking to class with your head down because you are nervous about talking to people.” The group follows suit, its members swerving en masse to avoid tripping one another. “Now do it again, but this time make eye contact and give a little nod,” Stifler encourages. Up next: make eye contact, smile, keep going. For the final scene, Stifler instructs her preps to pretend they are encountering a best friend whom they haven’t seen in five years. A melee of high-fives, hugs and salutations ensues, ending with two boys dropping to the ground where they proceed to undulate in unison, as if performing in a breakdancing contest. The group breaks out in laughter. “How do we honor the fact that people have different styles and comfort levels?” Stifler asks, refocusing the team. “What would you like your community to look like when you return to school for the year?”

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sampling of preps, we had at least one student from every continent, including Australia. I love that this is part of the fabric from day one. To have that kind of representation is remarkable, as is the fact that at Exeter, it’s completely normal.”

Ozzy Gomez-Santana ’21 was brimming with anticipation as he disembarked his bus at the Browne Center. Just a few days earlier, he’d made the journey to Exeter from his home in Delaware, and while he’d already connected with a few fellow preps in his dormitory and classes, at Browne he noticed many as-yet-unseen faces. As the morning activities got going, however, that soon began to change.

“I definitely made new friends out there,” Gomez-Santana says. “Plus, I got to know my class as a whole. The Browne Center staff made us comfortable, even during activities that required us to be in close proximity to each other. In fact, at one point, I had to hug another person to complete a game, but because of the way they had prepared us, it wasn’t awkward.

There was a strong emphasis on cooperation.”

Speaking of cooperation, Gomez-Santana is now part of a study group composed of new friends he made at the Browne Center. “We give each other positive reinforcement,” he

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SYNERGIES

Sam Perkins and Bill Rawson are co-presidents of the Exeter class of 1971. Along with four other Academy classmates and one spouse, they made the early morning trek to the Browne Center on Sept. 10, in order to join the prep class for its day of experiential activities. Their participation, conceived by Rawson and roundly endorsed by Perkins and others, including the Academy, was the starting point for what they hope will become a special connection between their class and the class of 2021, culminating in four years with the former’s 50th reunion and the latter’s graduation.

While the particulars of this pairing are still percolating and coalescing, Perkins says he and his classmates view it as a way to get to know current students and to see the Exeter community of today through their eyes. Likewise, he hopes that “students might enjoy getting an historical perspective from alumni who were here many decades before them.”

Meanwhile, he, Rawson and the other members of ’71 who joined the preps at Browne had the opportunity to begin their social experiment.

“I thought it was great,” Perkins says of the programming. “I was impressed by the facilitators and the way they drew out the lessons of each activity and connected them to challenges and opportunities.” And although Perkins wasn’t surprised by the intelligence of the students in his group, he emphasizes how impressed he was with their collaborative tendencies. “There were natural leaders, but no one was dominating the activities. Rather, there was a strong sense of respect and of trying to be inclusive. It was a very mature dynamic.”

Adds classmate and fellow participant Ted Gilchrist: “The preps are a real delight, and it is such a wonderful time to catch them, just when they are on the brink of so much change. Their frame of reference and experience is still middle school, and we find them just when they are stepping onto the stage of their new lives.

“It was so wonderful being treated like one of the gang, as we swung around on ropes and balanced on pallets. At lunch, they were more than just polite and welcoming, they seemed so genuinely curious about what it was like ‘in the old days.’ It was bittersweet having to leave them. I envy their teachers.”

Beyond enjoying their interactions with the preps as they engaged in the Browne Center’s programming, Perkins says he and his classmates had some important realizations during the program: “I think many people, myself included, deal with the challenge of fearing failure, so it was great seeing students do things outside of their comfort zones and pushing through perceived limits.” The value of teamwork was also reinforced. “I’m a person who tends to want to do things by myself,” Perkins says. “So it was good to be reminded that certain things cannot be done in isolation — that sometimes you need everyone’s participation in order for something to work.”

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explains. “I’m meeting up with Sam Perkins ’71 with them later today.”

Oona Turner ’21 during Caroline Huang’s first few orientation. days at Exeter were a bit more fraught than most. As residents of Houston’s Meyerland community, she and her family were still sorting out the damage inflicted on their home by Hurricane Harvey when the time came to transport her, and older sister Grace ’18, to New Hampshire. After busily outfitting her dorm room and familiarizing herself with the Exeter campus, Huang says she was then ready for a change of pace, which is exactly what the orientation program at Browne offered.

“I went into my Browne Center group not knowing anyone,” she says. “Yet soon I knew their names, their hobbies and even what excited them about Exeter. We built a strong and tight connection that day.”

Huang continues: “I also thought it was extremely interesting that some members of the class of 1971 joined us. Mr. Nat [Nathaniel G. Clark ’71], who was part of our group, told us what we could expect at Exeter, and what his time there was like. He shared that one of the best things he’d learned at Exeter was how to communicate with people, and advised us to try everything, but also to manage our time wisely — to balance schoolwork with our social lives.

“What I took away from the day was that even the smallest things, and the things that you think are unrelated, can help you connect with people, and that collaborating strengthens the group. After orientation, I felt like, ‘This isn’t over … a new journey is about to begin.’” E

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IN THE WORK CONSTRUCTION OF THE NEW FIELD HOUSE AND GOEL CENTER FOR T H E AT E R A N D D A N C E E N T E R S T H E HOME STRETCH Photography by Cheryl Senter

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hen the Thompson Cage opened in the winter of 1929, the editors of The Exonian did little to mask their pride: “The completion of this cage marks the attainment of an old ambition and the opening of a new era in athletics at Exeter. The old cry of insufficient practice due to a lack of equipment in the winter term will be a thing of the past, for the new cage is without doubt one of the finest in the country.”

More than 40 years later, the newspaper quoted Trustee Emeritus James A. Fisher ’38 speaking about plans for PEA’s first permanent performing arts facility, Fisher Theater. “I hope that a proper theater built with an eye to maximum flexibility will inspire even more and better participation,” Fisher said.

“Opportunities will expand, I hope, for acting, and that means appearing with confidence before others. ... And behind the scenes, opportunities for those in [the] production of sets, lights and all that goes with them.”

Those words have equal currency today, as the Academy prepares to open two new facilities on its South Campus this academic year: the field house (January 2018) and the David E. Goel and Stacey L. Goel Center for Theater and Dance (April 2018).

Both buildings promise to be as revolutionary as their predecessors, providing modern, state-of-the-art spaces for students and educators for decades to come. Together, they will transform South Campus into a vibrant community hub that celebrates and promotes the ideal of mind and body working together.

Here is a sneak peek at the two buildings under construction this fall — with the help of some of their eager new tenants.

Watch for full coverage of the building openings next year.

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ZONE

STAGECRAFT

The Goel Center’s mainstage theater will be a modified proscenium venue with 350 seats and an orchestra pit to serve drama, musical theater and dance. The neighboring thrust stage will offer seating for 149 spectators on three sides. Pictured: Actors Emmanuel Vasquez ’20, Jacob Hunter ’19 and Anna Clark ’19.

Agnis doloratistia sedis nullut voluptae lanimin tionserum volorep udandae del modi conse seque

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SHALL WE DANCE?

The Goel Center’s dance performance studio (not visible here), with 119 seats, will be Exeter’s first performance space designed specifically to dancers’ needs, including sight lines and a shockabsorbing sprung floor. Pictured: Abigail “Abby” Zhang ’19.

MAT MATTERS The field house’s new wrestling room can accommodate side-by-side competition circles for a program that has won more New England championships than any other independent school. Pictured: Kevin Lyskawa ’18.

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NET GAINS

Four competition-ready tennis courts will offer year-round training opportunities and ensure every home varsity match is played regardless of weather conditions. Pictured: Pedro Repsold De Sanson ’18 and Gabriella “Gabby” Gabel ’18.

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INSIDE TRACK

The 84,574-square-foot field house includes a 200-meter track oval with six 60-meter sprinting lanes and eight straightaway lanes. Bleacher seating can accommodate 500 spectators.

Pictured: Abel Ngala ’18.

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CONSIDERING THE WEIGHT

A VISIT TO THE PINE RIDGE INDIAN R E S E R VAT I O N I N S O U T H D A K O TA INSPIRES CHANGES IN THE CLASSROOM FOR EXETER TEACHERS

By Genny Beckman Moriarty

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NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

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itting at a Harkness table as she takes a break from planning on the first day of classes, History Instructor Betty Luther-Hillman recalls a recent visit to the burial grounds at Wounded Knee, which hold the remains of hundreds of Oglala Lakota men, women and children who were slain there by the United States Cavalry in 1890.

The site now rests on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, bordering the badlands of South Dakota, in rocky, barren terrain. Running her hands through her close-cropped hair, Luther-Hillman recalls her almost visceral response to standing in the spot where so many Lakota lost their lives. “That experience was really powerful to me,” she says.

“We talk about Wounded Knee, we read about all of the people who were killed there, and we read about the baby who survived. You can read all of those facts in a book, but you really feel it when you’re on the reservation.”

Luther-Hillman visited Wounded Knee in August, when she and three of her colleagues (English Instructor Erica Plouffe Lazure, Physical Education Instructor Melissa

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HISTORY

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Pacific and Associate Athletic Trainer Kalya Medina) volunteered with Re-Member, a nonprofit organization that works to improve the lives of the Oglala Lakota living on the Pine Ridge reservation, one of the starkest examples of rural poverty in the nation.

During their one-week stay at the Re-Member facility, the Exeter faculty members helped work on construction projects for families in need and visited sites on the reservation such as Wounded Knee, Oglala Lakota College, Badlands National Park and the Red Cloud Indian School. Through nightly guest lectures from elders of the Oglala Lakota Nation, the four women also received a crash course in the complex tangle of economic, historical, political and cultural contexts that help shape the lives of the Lakota today.

The visit to Pine Ridge was a powerful one for the Exeter employees, who are working to incorporate some of the insights it gave them, along with the questions it raised, into their work at the Academy — and hoping to organize subsequent trips for faculty, staff and eventually, students.

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Visitors to the Wounded Knee monument and burial grounds pay respect to the hundreds of Lakota people who lost their lives there.

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A PRESENT LINKED PAINFULLY TO THE PAST

The “baby who survived” to whom Luther-Hillman alluded was discovered at Wounded Knee several days after the 1890 massacre ended, sheltered beneath the frozen body of her mother. Lost Bird, as she came to be known, was taken by a white U.S. Army general and raised by his wife; later he abandoned both of them. Lost Bird lived in poverty and was never quite at home in either white or Lakota society. She died of the flu at 29 and was buried in a pauper’s grave in California. More than 70 years later, members of the Lakota tribe rescued her remains and returned them to Wounded Knee, where they symbolize for many a long tradition of lost cultures and stolen lives.

During her visit to Pine Ridge, Luther-Hillman says, she felt the weight of stories such as Lost Bird’s: “I kept thinking about what it would be like to live next to these battle sites with the trauma of history still shaping your everyday life.” Besides bringing the events of history to life, Luther-Hillman says, the experience drove home the fact that for many contemporary Lakota people, the legacy of those events isn’t actually history: “You meet people who are fifth-generation descendants of the people who died there and of those

“WE’VE BEEN TALKING A LOT ABOUT ... T HE STORIES AND VOICES THAT DON’T ALWAYS GET TOLD.” who managed to survive. These are families who often don’t have enough money or food to eat. They don’t have access to indoor plumbing or electricity and running water. You look at that, and you think, ‘Well, the reason life is like that for them is because of American history.’”

Statistics flesh out the grim picture LutherHillman paints of contemporary life on Pine Ridge: Unemployment rates are higher than 80 percent, high school dropout rates hover around 70 percent and the average per PEA faculty members Kalya capita income is only $6,000. The average life expectancy, at 52 for women and 48 for Medina, Melissa Pacific, men, is the second-lowest in the Western Hemisphere. Generations of children who Betty Luther-Hillman and were removed forcibly from their homes and sent to government-run boarding schools Erica Plouffe Lazure. are now living with the long-term effects of cultural genocide and sexual abuse — and struggling to avoid perpetuating that abuse with their own children. Twice during the past decade, Oglala Lakota elders declared a Suicide State of Emergency based on the alarming rate of young people — some as young as 6 — who had taken or attempted to take their own lives. Nearly 80 percent of the adult population of Pine Ridge is affected by alcoholism. And yet in an area more than twice the size of Rhode Island, there is only one grocery store, one extremely underfunded hospital, and little to no mental health services available.

Witnessing the all-too-tangible connection between the traumas of yesterday and the marginalization and poverty of today was a potent lesson for the other Exeter teachers as well. Lazure, a former Bennett Fellow, says her time on the reservation opened her eyes to a kind of deprivation she had only ever heard about in an abstract way or witnessed in developing countries. Seeing such conditions in the U.S. was disturbing to her, and it troubles her that so little attention is paid to

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these issues in textbooks and mainstream media outlets.

“Having the gist of understanding of this long history of abusive treatment of Native people — of our simultaneously harming, often through the guise of helping — that was difficult to come face-to-face with. We have this idea of Americans always being the hero, the good guys,” Lazure says. “But the stories I heard as firsthand, or as handed down from parents and grandparents, were stories of kids being taken from their homes and stripped of their identities, forced to cut their hair and punished physically if they wanted to speak Lakota. That legacy of systemic abuse continues to make itself felt on the reservation.”

GRAPPLING WITH HOW TO HELP

Helping to mitigate the effects of that legacy is one of the driving forces behind the nonprofit Re-Member, which has been operating on the reservation for nearly 20 years. By building relationships and sharing resources with the people of the Oglala Lakota Nation, members of the organization hope to improve the lives of people living in Pine Ridge in concrete ways.

Its volunteers assist in the construction of outhouses and bunkbeds; help create and maintain community gardens; install porch steps, decking and wheelchair ramps to make homes more accessible; and assist with maintenance and repairs to make them safer and more comfortable. During South Dakota’s harsh winter months, Re-Member delivers firewood and other supplies to people in need. Committed to building respect and a network of advocates for the Lakota people and their culture, its organizers also arrange guest lectures and other educational programming for their volunteers.

During their week at Pine Ridge, the Exeter contingency used muscles they hadn’t used in a long time as they carried heavy planks of wood, operated industrial dishwashers, dug deep trenches for latrines, and squatted low to the ground to install the trailer skirting that would help to insulate mobile homes in the extreme weather conditions of the Northern Plains. The Exeter participants found their work with Re-Member incredibly rewarding, but they confess to feeling overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of need they witnessed at Pine Ridge, and they’re acutely aware that any good they may have done was just a drop in a very leaky bucket.

“There are small, tangible things our group did during that one week to improve the lives of particular families, and that’s gratifying,” Lazure says, “but in the grand scheme of things, it’s nothing.”

She and the teachers are working on a public presentation to help raise awareness in the wider Exeter community, and they’re struggling to discern how to Associate Athletic Trainer make a substantive difference from 2,000 miles away. “We all have so much to give, and Kalya Medina helps dig a spending a week there feels like so little,” Lazure says. “But I see it as a seed. I’m hopeful ditch for a latrine. that the more people I talk to, the more it grows.”

One of the seeds Lazure is hoping to plant is the possibility of starting a teacher-exchange program between the Academy and the Red Cloud Indian School, a well-regarded Jesuit-run school often staffed by young and inexperienced teachers through AmeriCorps. She has also been looking into the possibility of asking the Lions Club to provide prescription eyeglasses and find surgeons who could provide cataract surgery on the reservation, where free ophthalmology services are nearly nonexistent. “Those seem like things that can happen with some advocacy,” she says. “And little things can have an impact.

If you’re taking care of your grandma, and she can’t take care of herself because her vision is poor, how do you choose work or school over helping her out?”

Over the course of the conversation, Lazure touches on the risks of “voluntourism” and swooping in from the outside to try to fix another community’s problems. She admits it would be arrogant to think that Exeter teachers have answers to the complex issues facing the people of Pine Ridge, saying, “I don’t want it to seem like I’m descending on them as a ‘white savior.’ I’m looking for small, respectful ways to help that can make a real difference. As the director of Re-Member reminded us,

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‘You are not here to solve anyone’s problems. But you can make a bed for a child or provide an outhouse for a family that needs it.’”

BUILDING CULTURAL AWARENESS

For Melissa Pacific, the timing of the trip couldn’t have been better, coming right before the start of school year, when Exeter employees had the opportunity to work with Robert Greene. Greene is a senior consultant and leadership trainer with JONES, a firm that specializes in helping organizations build greater cultural awareness. He will be consulting with the school’s administration throughout the year to help build a more inclusive community, one that finds strength and unity in Exeter’s diversity and creates a sense of belonging for everyone. In August, he led two days of cultural competency workshops for faculty and staff.

“It became apparent during our conversations with Greene that we really need to take the time to get to know one another, to get to know our kids and their cultures,” Pacific says. Her own interest in Native American culture is what prompted her trip to Pine Ridge. “My father used to do a lot of trading with his Native buddies on hunting trips to Canada,” Pacific explains. “He developed a love for their culture, and he instilled a respect for Native Americans in his kids. He taught me the true history of America, which I never recalled learning about at school, and it always felt natural to me that we should respect the first people who lived on our land.”

Pacific says hearing Oglala elders talk about their experiences and culture was one of the most rewarding aspects of the trip for her. She says it also left her wondering where genuine interest in another culture leaves off and cultural theft begins — and whether her family had crossed over that line. “We had the best intentions and we thought of it as respect,” she says, “but I wonder what the Oglala elders would have thought of my family’s collection of Native artifacts.”

The workshops with Greene gave employees the time and space to consider such questions about diversity and cultural awareness, many of which are taking place within the Exeter community and on a national stage. “We’ve been talking a lot about the parts of The road leading up to the our identities that are hidden, about the stories and voices that don’t always get told,” Wounded Knee memorial on Pacific says. Determined to invite more voices into the mix, she says she’ll be looking the Pine Ridge reservation. for ways to forge greater trust and stronger ties both with and among her students. Her experience at Pine Ridge and her recent dialogues with colleagues have reinforced the importance of making that attempt, despite the risk of making a mistake and the challenge of logistics.

“I need to be sure I’m asking them, ‘What was this experience like for you?’ I want to get to know who my students are under the surface, and I want them to do that with one another, too. ...

Sometimes we have to decide, ‘What will we gain in 60 minutes of practice time, or what will we gain in 60 minutes of sitting down face-to-face and getting to know one another?’”

Luther-Hillman agrees. “We have students coming from all over and from different circumstances. This trip has me thinking so much about how different some of our students’ lives look under this polished surface. As educators, sometimes we have this ‘Why don’t they ... just?’ tendency. But there are so many reasons students may not be able to respond the way we expect them to, and trying to understand those reasons is really crucial.

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SEEDS OF CHANGE IN THE CLASSROOM

Luther-Hillman, who organized the trip to Pine Ridge after spending a week volunteering with Re-Member the previous summer, says her experiences on the reservation have prompted her to look more deeply at what she emphasizes in her classroom and how. Since her earlier trip, she has been committed to offering a broader range of stories and perspectives — and to covering moments that receive little, if any, attention in the typical history classroom. “It doesn’t mean I change every topic, because lots of topics have validity,” she says. “But it makes me think about why we don’t teach certain topics.”

So, for instance, Luther-Hillman and her American History students spent time last winter examining Abraham Lincoln’s role in the execution of 38 Native Americans — the largest mass execution in our country’s history — and his decision to pardon 300 others who were slated to hang following the Dakota Uprising in 1862. “It’s a part of American history, and of Lincoln’s history, that nobody knows about,” she says. “Focusing on that meant we had to cut out a few of our Civil War lessons, but I would argue this is a part of that legacy. And it made the students think about how strange it was, that there is so much history they don’t ever learn about. It got them wondering, ‘What other things are we not finding out about?’”

Lazure, who has also been thinking about whose stories get read, is planning to include a wider variety of voices in her English

“...THERE ARE SO MANY REASONS STUDENTS MAY NOT BE ABLE TO RESPOND THE WAY WE EXPECT THEM TO, AND TRYING TO UNDERSTAND THOSE REASONS IS REALLY CRUCIAL.” classroom as well, including The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, Sherman Alexie’s funny, heartbreaking collection of stories about life on a Spokane Indian reservation. As she prepares a syllabus for her lowers, she’s considering how best to give them the background information they need to fully appreciate his stories. “It’s easy for students who read them without context to feel frustrated by English Instructor Erica the characters’ sense of hopelessness,” she says. Echoing Luther-Hillman’s words, she Plouffe Lazure helps attach adds, “You get the questions like ‘Why don’t they ... just?’ Or ‘How come they ... can’t?’ skirting to a mobile home.

I want to fill in the holes, so they’ll have a more nuanced understanding of the outside factors contributing to those feelings of inertia and despair.”

The two women have been envisioning possibilities for courses that would culminate in a trip to the reservation — to be taught under the umbrella of Exeter Innovates, a newly implemented program that allows for the creation of cross-disciplinary and experiential elective classes. Over the course of the term, the readings and discussions would serve to give students the background knowledge needed to inform and enrich their experience on the reservation — filling in the holes, so to speak.

“We don’t want to bring the students out there until they have a framework for understanding their experience first,” Lazure says.

As the interview winds down in her classroom, stuffy from the late August heat, Luther-Hillman outlines a few of their ideas: “What if there were a course on poverty and inequality in history, which would broaden out to include Native American and other histories? Or we could teach a class on Native American history and culture with a service component and focus our curriculum on direct service and the risks of doing more harm than good? The possibilities are really exciting.” E

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“THE CORE VALUES THAT HAVE SUSTAINED AND DEFINED THIS SCHOOL ...

UNDERPIN ALL THAT WE DO.”

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CONNECTIONS

News and notes from the alumni community

Sources of Inspiration

By Lynn Taylor, Director of The Exeter Fund

CHERYL SENTER

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CHRISTIAN HARRISON

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he past year has been a dynamic and exciting transition for me. About a year ago, I became director of The Exeter Fund after nine years as one of the Academy’s regional directors of major gifts. One experience has enriched the other, and I have so enjoyed the opportunity to connect with even more alumni.

Just as my role has changed, the Academy continues to evolve to better support our students as they engage with a world more interconnected than ever before. Yet, the core values that have sustained and defined this school for more than 200 years underpin all that we do.

I remain extremely proud to be a part of Exeter today and honored to lead a program that directly impacts the Exeter experience for every student. The Exeter Fund supports the tradition of excellence that defined your experience here, including our Harkness curriculum, non sibi outreach, our competitive athletic teams, and the truly inspirational student achievements in music, art, theater and dance.

We’ve come a long way since Dr. Lewis Perry, Exeter’s eighth principal, started a tradition of giving in 1922. Every December, Dr. Perry would ask Exeter alumni to support the “running expenses” of the school through a gift to the “Christmas Fund.” In 1922, Exeter received 302 contributions totaling $5,281. Over time, the language has changed, but the needs have remained the same. Ninety-five years later, this loyal and generous tradition of giving at Exeter is the envy of our peer schools and helps ensure our tuition is lower than many of those institutions.

Last year, I had the opportunity to address the students at Thanksgiving assembly and chose to relay a story about Bill Witkin ’39. When I told them that Mr. Witkin has supported the Exeter Fund for 77 consecutive years — from his graduation in 1939 to 2016, even while serving his country in World War II — there was a collective gasp, and then silence. I ended with a special salute of gratitude to Exeter’s most loyal donor. The students’ applause that ensued was filled with a palpable thankfulness for those who make their experience here possible. I want to add my own gratitude to theirs. It is a privilege and inspiration to do this work, and I am excited to see what this next year brings. E

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ST E P H A N I E ST E B I C H ‘8 4

Safeguarding America’s Art

By Debbie Kane

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Another skill gained at the Academy: “It’s perfect training to be a museum director,” she quips. “You attend classes six days a week, and I now work six days a week!”

Stebich received a bachelor’s degree from Columbia University and a master’s degree from New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts. She landed an internship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and a fellowship at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, both in New York City. She went on to assume assistant director positions at the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Minneapolis Institute of Art. From 2005-17, she was director of the Tacoma Art Museum, where she oversaw a renovation that doubled the museum’s exhibition space, added 2,000 items to its collection (including an important compilation of Western American art and the largest collection of glass works

by Tacoma-born artist Dale Chihuly) and raised $37 million for a capital and endowment campaign. Stebich oversaw more than 100 exhibitions during her tenure in Tacoma, including “Art AIDS America” and “Edvard Munch and the Sea.” She also served as a trustee of the Association of Art Museum Directors and currently serves as the American Alliance of Museums.

Stebich is adept at building connections, whether it’s between museums and their audiences, museums and donors, or artists and visitors. She’s interested in working with the other Smithsonian museums to “tell our American story comprehensively” and continue making SAAM and the Renwick Gallery relevant to their communities. Despite threatened cuts to arts funding both nationally and locally, Stebich believes museums are important community touchpoints. “Museums are doing a better job of engaging visitors,” she says. “However, we need to do more around diversity, equity and inclusion.

The challenge is understanding incoming generations who are more diverse than ever, their needs and interests, and rethinking the museum experience. It’s an exciting time to be leading the nation’s American art museum.” E COURTESY OF THE SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM

rt has been a constant in the life of Stephanie Stebich ’84, from when she played in the galleries of the Brooklyn Museum while her mother, an art historian, was working, to the time she taught a class on contemporary art in her senioryear Art History course at Exeter.

Earlier this year, after an already distinguished career in the art museum field, Stebich was named the Margaret and Terry Stent Director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) and the Renwick Gallery, in Washington, D.C. She steers an institution with one of the world’s most significant collections of American fine art and contemporary craft, with 43,000 objects and a $21 million budget.

“This is an institution I’ve always admired,” Stebich says.

“It’s an art museum where people have long-standing ties and memories not only in Washington but around the world.”

Leading a Smithsonian museum seems a natural career milestone for Stebich. Her appreciation of art and history was nurtured by her parents, German immigrants who moved to the New York City area in the late 1960s. “I was fortunate to grow up in a family that was interested in art and visited museums regularly,” she says. Her mother, Ute, returned to school when Stebich and her brothers were young, earning an art history degree. Her father, Gerhard, a refugee during World War II, instilled in his children the importance of knowledge. “He lost his home and family belongings during the war and told us, ‘What you put in your head, no one can take away from you,’” Stebich says.

Exeter gave Stebich the opportunity to explore her burgeoning interest. Recognizing that spark, her art instructor, H. Nichols B. Clark, suggested she teach a segment on contemporary art to her class. She prepared by visiting New York galleries, collecting slides and strategizing how to teach modern art concepts. “Those are the kinds of experiences at Exeter that forever change you,” she says. “They challenge you but give you confidence.”

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Walking the Walk

By Janet Reynolds

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VINCENT ZHENG

hen Marlin Bottex ’03 found herself with some time between graduation from the Wharton School of Business and a West Coast consulting job, she chose to volunteer at a Syrian refugee camp. “I knew I wanted to get involved,” she says. “It was a way to give back to the global community in my unique gap of free time.”

Bottex worked at a refugee camp called Ritsona, located on a former Greek army base of that name, one hour outside of Athens. The camp had about 800 residents, as they’re called, and Bottex taught English to adults and children.

During the long days at the camp, Bottex and the other volunteers learned more about the residents and their personal stories, about the struggles and tragedies they had endured. “We knew many in our communities back home who were interested in the crisis but didn’t understand it or what they could do to help,” she says, “so we had countless conversations about how to bring what we had seen and heard to our home communities.”

A concept slowly evolved: Once they returned to their home countries, the volunteers would host a series of exhibits featuring art, music and other media created at the camps to raise awareness of the refugee crisis. They would gather the artwork, photographs and music while still volunteering at the camps, providing the residents with canvases, paints and other supplies. Music for some of the events featured an album made by a resident who had been a professional musician in his native Syria.

The exhibits would also include photographs taken by one of the volunteers who was a behavioral therapist for the children at the camp. “He could fade into the

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background and take incredible portraits,” Bottex says.

Excerpts of letters from the residents provided additional snapshots of the crisis. The event was called Re: Refugees. “This is a way to say we need to keep talking about [the refugee crisis],” she says of their motivation.

Events have been hosted all around the world, Bottex says, ticking off Amsterdam, Barcelona, London and Mallorca.

Her event took place at an art studio in Brooklyn last year.

“It raised more than any other event so far,” she says, noting the gallery was packed to capacity.

Volunteering for Syrian refugees probably doesn’t surprise those who know Bottex well. In graduate school, as co-head of Wharton Women in Business, she helped pass initiatives to support working mothers at Wharton, including the creation of a lactation room. She also mentored fellow graduate students through the AfricanAmerican MBA Association and the Consulting Club; worked with younger students through Wharton Women in Business; and spent time consulting for a West Philadephia nonprofit that provides job-readiness resources to local women in need.

“Non sibi rings in my head very often,” she says. “I never want to do something just for me. What am I giving to the people around me? That value of Exeter — of always thinking about how your actions and what you’re learning and what you’re doing can impact your community — has stuck with me.”

“I still wear my Exeter ring,” she adds. “At this point, it’s a part of me, a token of the values I’ve held close all this time. It’s easy to get stuck in the rat race working consulting now and always needing to think about yourself. But my personal check is to see what’s going on around me and what can I do to make it better.” E

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G I V I N G B A C K : J O E B A I N ’4 1

Forging Bonds, Link by Link

By Lynn Horowitch ’81; P’19 “Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain … that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.” —Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

S

ince his arrival on

campus before the start of World War II, Sherwood “Joe” Bain, class of 1941, has been assembling a chain of connections between himself and the extended Academy community, which includes three generations of the Bain family and a long line of younger alumni. Through the establishment of the Ninoy Scholarship, which covers part of the cost of an Exeter education for Asian students, Bain has forged strong relationships with students of Thai, Filipino and Hmong descent, among others. To understand how the scholarship came into being and to fully appreciate Bain’s lasting connections with its recipients, including Tchao Thao ’01, it is necessary to go link by link, beginning in 1939.

After attending high school in Maine, Bain came to Exeter that year for a two-year postgraduate term. He says, “It was an eye-opener! The mixture of students, the Harkness table, the faculty and facilities — it gave me a whole picture.” After leaving Exeter, Bain was stationed in the Philippines with the Army during World War II, and he came to have a strong appreciation for the Filipino culture and people. He graduated from Harvard and Harvard Business School after returning to the States, and later he and his wife, Carol, served as a host family for Filipino students at Harvard.

Bain also paid particular attention to events in the Philippines. “I followed the political situation, and the leader, really a dictator, was Ferdinand Marcos — a scoundrel!” Bain says. Marcos, who served as president of the Philippines for more than two decades, established an authoritarian regime criticized for corruption and jailing

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Curt Perry ’69, Kelly Teevan ’69, George Bain ’69 and Joe Bain ’41 at Exeter Leadership Weekend.

opposition leaders. He was deposed in 1986.

Marcos did one positive thing. He permitted Benigno S. Aquino Jr., a leader of the opposition party, to come to the United States in 1980 for open-heart surgery.

Aquino later lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, while he underwent medical treatments. Around the same time, Bain befriended Rene A.V. Saguisag, a Filipino doing graduate work at Harvard Law School, who later served in the Senate in Manila. Through that friendship, Bain got to know Aquino, known by his nickname “Ninoy,” and his wife, Corazon. “I realized what a dynamic person Ninoy was,” Bain says. “I treasure the handmade place mats, still in use, a hostess present.”

Bain, a loyal Exonian, reached out to the Academy and arranged for Aquino to speak at an assembly. While on campus, Aquino met with Asian students, including Rafael Ongpin ’83 and Kamal Ahmad ’83. Their classmate Rick Travers ’83 said, “It was the best assembly talk in my four years!”

On Aug. 21, 1983, Aquino returned to Manila and was assassinated on the airport tarmac. His wife, Corazon, later served as president of the Philippine Republic

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had come to the United States as refugees from Laos, (1986-92), as did his son, Benigno S. Aquino III, from settling first in Rhode Island, then in Milwaukee, and 2010 to 2016. then Minneapolis, where they lived with their son in a While Bain was building connections to the Aquino tight-knit Hmong community. Exeter was the first place family and the Filipino people, he also was adding links that Thao lived where there wasn’t a Hmong populato his Exeter chain. He says, “Exeter was a tremendous tion and where he wasn’t influence in my life — one surrounded by extended of the best institutions I’ve family. Bain helped him make been in touch with.” Over the adjustment. “He’d tell me the years, Bain stayed close about his experiences, when to Exeter, as Carol worked Exeter was so different,” in Boston as secretary to Thao recalls. “He listened.”

Principal Emeritus Lewis When it came time for Thao Perry, the school’s eighth to apply to college, Bain principal. When their provided helpful advice and son, George, was born, supported Thao in achieving Bain called Perry to share his goal of attending Harvard. the good news. He also Thao returned to expressed his hope that his Minneapolis and earned legal son could go to Exeter. Perry and medical degrees in a replied, “You tell Carol: joint degree program in law, He’s in!” George Bain is a science and technology from member of the class of 1969. the University of Minnesota.

Both Bains share the distincHe practiced patent law with tion of being honored by the a firm in Minneapolis for five Academy for their longtime years, but recently took a service to it: George in 1989 position as a senior attorney as one of the first recipients in the life sciences sector at a of the President’s Award, private equity firm in Seattle. given annually by the While he is busy planning his move General Alumni Association presiJoe Bain with Tchao Thao ’01. and a new career path, he says that dent, and Joe in 1992 with that year’s when it comes to Bain, “I’ll always make time.”

Founder’s Day Award. And another generation continWhile at Harvard, Thao was a 10-minute walk from ues the chain: Joe’s grandson David Huoppi has been the Bain home and occasionally joined Joe and Carol for teaching math at Exeter since 2014. lunch. Now that they live in different time zones, they Bain has known each Exeter principal dating back to stay in touch mainly through email. “Joe forwards articles Perry (1914-1946) and Bill Saltonstall (1946-63). He has to me that he thinks I would like,” Thao says. While Bain been an active volunteer and reunion attendee, and when wasn’t able to make the trip, Thao invited him to his he and Carol decided to leave their home in Cambridge, wedding to Susie Vang three years ago. And whenever they settled at River Woods, a continuing care retirement Thao returns to Exeter for a reunion, he makes a point of community in Exeter. Carol passed away two years ago; calling on Bain.

Bain still lives there.

Bain has provided a lot of practical advice and life In his professional life, Bain met with some success lessons. Thao says, “When I started at Harvard, many in his career as a chartered financial analyst — a “stock of the decision-makers there were of Joe’s generation. picker,” in his words. He decided to endow the Benigno Because I knew Joe, it gave me confidence that I could S. Aquino Scholarship at Exeter. His goals with the gift have mentors from that era.” were to memorialize Ninoy Aquino and to support young And Thao will continue to add links to the chain that people of Philippine extraction. Over the years, the scope has connected him with Bain. He has been an active of the scholarship has broadened to include the wider volunteer, serving on the board of the Minnesota chapter Asian community. of March of Dimes and mentoring Hmong students. He Bain has made it a point to get to know each of the says, “When I give back to my community, that stems scholarship recipients, and he has remained particularly from my experience with Joe, who has dedicated his life close with Tchao Thao ’01. They first met during Thao’s to giving back to others.” E prep year, for breakfast in the dining hall. Thao’s parents

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P H I L A N T H R O P Y

Peak Performance T H E C L AS S O F 1 9 59 M U S I C C E N T E R A D D I T I O N’S I M PAC T I N I T S F I R ST Y E A R A centerpiece of the music building addition, “The Bowld” provides concertgoers and performers alike with a vibrant space to enjoy.

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By Melanie Nelson

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lassmates Dudley Rauch ’59 and Leonard Egan ’59 are reminiscing over the phone lines from their respective homes in Southern California and Washington, D.C. Fond memories of student exploits are interspersed with the history of their class’s recent generous gift to the Academy, which helped make possible the construction of the Class of 1959 Music Center Addition. Opened to rave reviews in the fall of 2016, the facility is doing exactly what Rauch, Egan and their classmates hoped — attracting students to Exeter’s many music classes, groups and programs and making possible world-class performances.

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was introduced at the class’s 55th reunion. From there, explains Rauch, “Leonard did the better part of contacting members of the class to solicit gifts,” successfully shepherding 45 donors into the fold. For his part, Rauch “had fun sending classmates emails and blueprints outlining the scope of the project.” In the end, the class raised more than $4.5 million toward the addition, in the process securing naming rights.

As Exeter marks the one-year anniversary of the addition’s opening, Rauch and Egan say they are delighted with both the physical space and the manner in which it is being utilized by Exeter instructors, students and guest musicians. “With this project, I feel like our class has contributed something important to the Academy

Class of 1959 members who were able to attend the addition’s grand opening last year included: John Harris, Jay Gunther, Sam Saltonstall, Len Egan, Barry Lydgate, Dick Hanson and Rannie Sexton.

without being ostentatious,” Rauch explains. “It has been a non sibi moment for all of us.”

CHRISTIAN HARRISON

The seed for a class fundraising project in support of the arts was officially planted in the summer of 2012, when Rauch and his then wife-to-be, Michele, visited campus. But his own passion for music emerged decades earlier. “When I arrived at Exeter in the summer of 1955, I had a subscription to the Columbia Record Club on the classical side,” Rauch recalls, “and it was at the Academy that I really started studying classical music. Since then music, and particularly classical music, have always been a big part of my life.”

Rauch’s passion would eventually lead him to become a benefactor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic (he remains a member of the board of directors) and of LA’s Walt Disney Concert Hall. Beginning with his 40th Exeter reunion in 1999, he has also become increasingly

involved with fundraising for the Academy, further fortifying the class of 1959’s robust legacy of generosity.

Like Rauch, Egan, who is also a classical music enthusiast, renewed his connection to Exeter after returning for reunion, in his case, the class’s 45th in 2004. “My 45th was actually the first time I had returned to the Academy since graduation,” he says. The experience rekindled in Egan an emotional attachment to Exeter. Soon, he was supporting the Academy philanthropically and as a class volunteer. He also has served as class president since 2014.

Fundraising for the Class of 1959 Music Center Addition officially commenced in 2014, when the project

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MUSIC TO OUR EARS

Professional flutist Peter Schultz, an instructor at Exeter since 1989, is currently serving his second term as chair of the Academy’s Department of Music. Such leadership and longevity have afforded him the opportunity to experience up close the evolution of Exeter’s music programs and facilities.

Schultz says enrollment in music classes and performance groups has been on an upward trajectory throughout his nearly three decades here, but notes that student interest has occasionally outpaced the physical capacity of the department. He cites what occurred immediately following the completion of the first expansion in 1995, when the original Lewis Perry Music Building was enlarged

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CHRISTIAN HARRISON

The new addition to the Forrestal-Bowld Music Center now provides the spaces needed to better support a robust music program.

and renamed the Forrestal-Bowld Music Center: “As soon as the doors of that addition opened, our enrollment almost doubled, and our program continued to grow in all possible ways.” Such burgeoning, while welcome and encouraged, eventually strained even the enlarged facility, leaving the Music Department scrambling to find practice spaces in other buildings around campus.

News of the class of 1959’s gift to support the latest addition then, Schultz says, came as music to his and his colleagues’ ears. And nearly one year after the grand opening, the virtues of the space are more apparent than ever. “The benefits have been enormous,” Schultz explains exuberantly. “The Bowld provides us with a beautiful space, perfect for our concerts, as well as a lovely rehearsal area. The Harkness classroom is a first for us, and the other rehearsal and teaching rooms contribute much-needed space for collaboration. Our space needs have been significantly improved. In fact, it’s hard to imagine a more stunning and congenial environment in which to make music.”

It isn’t merely the addition’s spectacular spaces that make it so remarkable, Schultz explains, but also the way music sounds when played or sung there. That is particularly true of its main performance space, “The Bowld,” named after Bill Bowld ’43, who has been a longtime supporter of music at Exeter. “The acoustics …

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are extraordinary,” he emphasizes. “The room is tunable, and can be adjusted according to the type of group using the space and the desired sound. It’s amazingly flexible.

Everyone who performed there last year commented on both its beauty and the exquisite acoustics.”

HITTING ALL THE RIGHT NOTES

Maya Kim ’18 has played the bassoon in Exeter’s Symphony and Chamber orchestras since her prep year.

This has given her a unique before-and-after perspective on the transformation that’s occurred since the opening of the Class of ’59 Music Center Addition. The contrast, she says, is like night and day. Literally.

“When I previously played in Symphonia [Exeter’s intermediate to advanced-intermediate orchestra], we practiced in Landers,” Kim explains, referring to one of three large practice rooms in the original music building. “That space has few windows, and is very dark and enclosed. It could be hard on your energy to practice there for long periods of time.” The room’s acoustics were equally problematic in that they differed from performance spaces like Phillips Church. “To account for that discrepancy meant having to adjust our instruments prior to any community performances,” she says, “which in turn meant that we’d sometimes hear new mistakes while giving concerts. That can be jarring.”

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has been a game-changer at all levels, offering enough new practice rooms to accommodate student interest and schedules, phenomenal acoustics throughout, and, with The Bowld, a rehearsal and performance space that is both practical and beautiful. “I love the light that comes in,” says Kim, who practices in The Bowld at least five times per week. “And it’s gorgeous when it rains or snows.

It makes practicing so enjoyable, and because The Bowld is also our performance space, it makes that transition much easier, too.”

Glidden muses: “I definitely know people who occasionally go to The Bowld just to be in that space, and I think it has actually increased concert attendance.” E

CHERYL SENTER

Fellow senior Victoria Glidden ’18, a flutist in the Academy’s Concert Band, concurs with Kim about pre-addition practice spaces: “Prior to the new addition, Concert Band practiced in the Round Room, which was far too small for a group of our size. My instrument is compact enough that it wasn’t hard for me to get comfortable, but some of the other musicians had to do a lot of maneuvering to make things work. It was that crowded.”

What’s more, while Glidden describes herself as a casual musician, she says that friends who are more serious often were frustrated by the dearth of practice space in the old building.

Both young women agree that the class of ’59’s gift

Jon Sakata (left) works with Jacob Zimmerman ’19 in the Music Media and Technology Suite.

N E W

F RO N T I E RS

A year on, the Music Media and Technology Suite has provided a seed to begin evolving a vision where acoustic ecology has long been pointing: that the entire spectrum of sounds and songs of the Earth — inclusive of our diverse human cultures, histories, practices, trajectories —be studied, creatively engaged with, amazed by, learned from.

This seed also provides us with a necessary challenge to nurture it, to grow it into an entire pedagogy that poses deep questions to we “musicians” who must reflect and create in this world that needs both greater human understanding of one another;

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but also has the humility to place the immensely enmeshed existence of life at its center. As students and teachers, co-learning and co-producing together, can we prosper this seed into so many yet to be known proliferations of diverse and inclusive sonic habitats — from calls, chants, songs spanning auditory systems and transcending our previously prescribed and limited curricula; our niches, biases, tastes intentionally and critically contextualized amidst such richness, bounty and possibility?

—Jon Sakata, adjunct music instructor

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FROM EVERY QUARTER E XO N I A N S M A K E C O N N E C T I O N S AT H O M E A N D A R O U N D T H E WO R L D Please note, all photos are identified left to right unless otherwise indicated.

GREENWICH The Exeter family enjoyed an opportunity to gather in Connecticut and hear from Principal MacFarlane at the Indian Harbor Yacht Club.

Dave Bechtel ’86; Principal Lisa MacFarlane ’66 (Hon.); P’09, P’13; and John Sargent ’90

Stan Phelps ’52 and his wife, Betsy; Marc Fleuette ’81 and Ned Lamont ’72

Caitlin Wardell ’96, Christopher Dimsey ’93 and his wife, Jocelyn

Rita Yang P’19 and James Wang ’19

Jon Olmsted ’60 and his wife, Janet

BOB CAPAZZO

Jamie Nicholson and John Nicholson ’78

Chandler Jean-Jacques ’19, Kirsten Nergaard ’16 and Taylor Jean-Jacques ’16 Joyce and Mark Weisenborn ’98 and Kevin Flynn ’14

Creighton and Heather Reed P’90; GP’21

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ASIA Active regional associations contributed to summertime events for alumni and students.

TOYKO Engaging in science created an Exeter moment far from the Academy campus.

PEA students who were enrolled in a two-week, high-level physics course at Riken, Japan’s largest comprehensive research institution, used the occasion of a luncheon reception in Tokyo to thank alumni supporters, reciprocate the generosity of host families, and reconnect with Japanese science teachers whose classrooms they had visited.

UPCOMING EVENTS

HONG KONG David Ng ’97, Andrew Kwan ’97, Flora Chiu ’00, Michael Chan ’96, Matthew Lo ’97, Kevin Leung ’99, Albert Chan ’99 and Michelle Kwock ’95 kicked off fall at an interschool social.

Exonians enjoy reconnecting through numerous activities and events, including large receptions and small socials, sports competitions, cultural and educational opportunities and non sibi projects. You can view and register for events online at www.exonians.exeter.edu, or call the Alumni and Parent Relations Office at 603-777-3454.

ASIA

Reception and Dinner in Seoul Thursday, Nov. 2 Reception in Singapore Friday, Nov. 3 Reception in Hong Kong Tuesday, Nov. 7 Parent Reception in Hong Kong Wednesday, Nov. 8

COLORADO

Dan Brown ’82 Book Talk and Reception in Denver Wednesday, Nov. 15

GEORGIA

Reception in Atlanta Wednesday, Nov. 29

MINNESOTA

Dan Brown ’82 Book Talk and Reception in St. Paul Thursday, Nov. 16

NEW YORK

Annual Reception in New York City Tuesday, Jan. 16, 2018

UNITED KINGDOM

HONG KONG The Exeter family gave current students a hearty farewell as they headed off to PEA for the new academic year.

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Annual Reception in London Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2018

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C O N N ECT I O N S

COAST TO COAST Alumni gatherings around the country brought Exonians together for summertime fun and learning opportunities.

WASHINGTON, DC Exonians celebrated the arrival of summertime with a “Nothing Fancy” happy hour on June 13: Benno Kurch ’75, Jessie George ’04, Olivia Lenson ’08, Tan Anderson ’97, Brad Hennessy ’07, Elizabeth Stockton ’12 and Kate Morris ’07.

ARLINGTON, VA Exonians in the northern Virginia area gathered for good conversation and good cheer on June 28.

PHILADELPHIA Exonians gathered in the Center City garden of Cletus Lyman ‘63.

Jinny Cho ’07, Ronnie Dixon ’07, Jessica Yi ’08

LA JOLLA, CALIFORNIA Exeter faculty who led The Exeter Humanities Institute’s initial visit to the West Coast were greeted by alumni at an outdoor reception hosted by Aimeclaire Roche ’87. Above, George Berger ’62 and Eric McDonald ’77

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Victor Krulak ’55 and Tracy Sundlun ’70

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NEW YORK CITY Exonians from the classes of 2002 to 2012 came together to enjoy an “Escape the Met” adventure at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

REUNIONS 2018 If your graduation year ends in 3 or 8, mark your calendar for reunions in May 2018! Join your classmates back on campus to reconnect with old friends and discover new ones.

SEATTLE Alumni volunteers got together in July to plan events for the upcoming year: Chris Wronsky ’71, Tom Platt ’67, Anthony Chen ’78, Hannah Graham ’15, Katie Holmes ’99, John Kim ’80 and Jean Platt.

May 4-6, 2018 Class of 1988 Class of 1993 Class of 1998 Class of 2003

The Exeter Association of Washington hosted a funfilled Saturday in August — a tour of the USS Turner Joy followed by the Kitsap Wine Festival.

May 11-13, 2018 Class of 1963 Class of 1973 Class of 1983 Class of 2008 May 17-20, 2018 Class of 1968 May 18-20, 2018 Class of 1958 Class of 1978 Class of 2013

DENVER Exeter Association of Colorado volunteers Cameron Shorey ’12 and Justin Norris ’11 were among those who met up on Aug. 2 to plan area events for the upcoming year.

May 22-24, 2018 Class of 1943 Class of 1948 Class of 1953 Noah Glick and Andrew Ching from the class of ’06

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C O N N ECT I O N S

SEND-OFF PARTIES New students connected with tried-and-true Exonians at locations around the U.S. before heading to Exeter for the 2017–18 school year.

TACOMA, WASHINGTON

WASHINGTON, DC ATLANTA, GEORGIA

NEW YORK, NEW YORK

PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA

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EXETER EXPEDITIONS The play’s the thing ... for Exeter Expeditions London theater-goers, who spent a full week in July attending plays in the theater capital of the world. The tour was directed by Exeter’s Theater and Dance Instructor Sarah Ream ’75, who shared her first-hand knowledge of the ins and outs of theater.

EXETER EXPEDITIONS 2018

EDUCATIONAL TRAVEL PROGRAMS The spirit of Harkness and the passion of Exeter instructors create four extraordinary travel opportunities.

LONDON THEATER

July 21-28, 2018

This is your ticket to a week of extraordinary drama and lively Harkness discussion in the theater capital of the world.

WWI – ANNIVERSARY OF THE END OF THE WAR

October 6-13, 2018

Get to know France and Belgium through the key sites of the Great War while simultaneously examining this world-changing event through a distinctly Exonian lens.

NORTHERN LIGHTS OF ICELAND March 6-12, 2018 Explore the pristine beauty of Iceland and learn about the country’s commitment to sustainability during special outings in one of the world’s prime viewing spots for the Northern Lights.

COSTA RICA BIRDING EXPEDITION

March 3-11, 2018 Encounter abundant biodiversity and the beauty of Drake Bay on the Osa Peninsula, home to Corcovado National Park and the region’s most exotic birds and animals.

For details and registration information, visit www.exeter.edu/expeditions.

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The Building Wants to Say Mairead Small Staid ’06, 2017-18 Bennett Fellow

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My oldest friend comes to visit, and we walk past the brick building where we met, pushing her baby in his stroller. There’s still a great deal I might learn about how the body can be altered. There’s still a great deal I might learn, in general.

Every afternoon, I enter the quiet of the campus library to write. My office is on a floor I never visited as a student, so it exists solely as part of this new Exeter in which I live, holding no memories or their absences. There, I’ve been reading about the life of Louis Kahn, the architect who designed the building. One of Kahn’s realizations, writes Wendy Lesser, his biographer, “was that architecture exists in time, not just in space. … Only by walking around and through one of his finished structures can you perceive how many different pathways to discovery it offers.”

When I need to lift my eyes from the page or screen, I leave my office to walk around and through the many lightfilled floors of the library: the clothbound hush of the stacks; the travertine atrium; the warm tones of the ground floor where Kahn’s models for the building sit within the building itself, like a memory contained, displayed, preserved.

“The building wants to say,” Kahn once said, “‘Look, I want to tell you about the way I was made.’” The body wants to say the same. And this saying, this telling, which is my occupation, seems to grow more worthwhile beneath this vast and airy concrete ceiling, between these stacks, in this cathedral to the object I’m trying to make out of my memories, out of their failures.

Kahn’s own favorite buildings, Lesser says, were the ancient Greek ruins of Paestum, the temples and city walls that have survived their creators by two and a half millennia — Kahn called the place “a beginning within which is contained all the wonder that may follow in its wake.”

There is no limit, I’m reminded, to this wonder. We can only make more of it, never less. E

ALLAN BURCH

odies provide a site of continual erasure: cells flake and regenerate, bones fuse. Buried deep in our bodies, our memories rush away more rapidly than they came, an otherworldly tide. We can never make more of memory, only less.

Memory is classed into kinds, semantic and episodic, and its failures can be categorized the same way: We forget facts we once knew; we forget whole years we once lived. Returning to Exeter 15 years after my first arrival has reminded me of these absences, and done little to fill them. My forgetting, too, is semantic and episodic, both scenic and expository: I’ve forgotten the declensions of Latin, the formulas of calculus, and I’ve forgotten the particular shifting textures of hundreds of days. And though I know, I know this body of mine lived through them, the evidence seems scarce. I gather what I can.

Most of the time, the transformation of our bodies is too slow to be noticed. Few are the minutes singularly imprinted, whether in joy or pain or their incongruous collision. A small scar on my right thigh reminds me of biking circles around this campus in the gleaming spring evening, in the fleeting minutes before hastening back for check-in, air rushing past our ears. Turning off Front Street and down an unlit drive, our bikes are halted, my hips flung forward into handlebars and my right leg caught between pedal and twisting wheel: a chain stretches across the access road, invisible in the satin black of the night. All that rushing air seems to lie within my ears now, not without. We bike back to our dorms gingerly, jeans ripped and leg bleeding and laughing, because we are fine; we are more than fine.

Every morning since returning, I look down that unlit drive from my apartment’s window. I can see, if I lean just a bit, the chain that still stretches there, that still shines in the worn quarter of skin on my thigh. Returning to Exeter, my memories are corroborated, made real, but also exposed for their thinning inadequacy. I walk across green lawns, looking up at buildings I spent countless hours in, and think: Shouldn’t I remember more of this? Shouldn’t there be more?

Editor’s Note: The George Bennett Fellowship celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. Established by Elias B.M. Kulukundis ’55 in honor of PEA English Instructor George Bennett, the one-year fellowship has provided writers “of outstanding promise” with the support they need to pursue their craft. We will feature a Bennett Fellow in each issue of the Bulletin this year to celebrate the anniversary.

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LAMONT GALLERY FREDERICK R. MAYER ’45 ART CENTER

2017 & 2018 EXHIBITIONS QUEER KIDS

By M. Sharkey September 12-October 21, 2017 Features works produced over the past decade documenting gay youth in the United States and abroad. Sharkey’s photographs are intimate testaments to his subjects’ powerful self-awareness. At once empathetic and opulent, they are the visual counterpart to the voices these young people have struggled — lately with some success — to find.

Po, Mons, Belgium, by M. Sharkey

POSSIBLE SUBJECT POSITIONS

November 17, 2017-February 3, 2018 Reception: Friday, November 17, 5:30-7:30 p.m.

Exploring the poetic and transitory nature of the subject through sound, textiles, prints, plaster and more. Includes work by Maud Bryt ’83, Merill Comeau, Anna Schuleit Haber, Adriane Herman, Elena Kovylina, Masary Studios, Tracie Morris and Alison Saar.

Ask Me A Question, by Maud Bryt ’83

PERFORMING FEMINISM(S)

February 20-April 21, 2018 Reception: Friday, February 23, 5:30-7:30 p.m.

The PEA student curatorial team examines multiple notions of feminism and the ‘performance’ of identities in celebration of the new David E. Goel and Stacey L. Goel Center for Theater and Dance.

Image from the student curatorial team’s Change Agents: Personal Art as Political Tactic exhibition, March 2016. Work by Jave Gakumei Yoshimoto, Lauren Gillette and Keith Francis.

ART 500 PEA STUDENT ART SHOW

May 11-June 3, 2018

This annual exhibition, which showcases the work of advanced art students at PEA, promises to be a colorful burst of creativity, inquiry and passion.

(Left to right) Details of work by Mitchell Kirsch ’17, Caroline Davis ’17, Grace Williams ’17 and Christopher Agard ’18.

LAMONT GALLERY PHILLIPS EXETER ACADEMY 11 TAN LANE EXETER, NH 03833

603-777-3461 • gallery@exeter.edu Gallery hours: Monday by appointment, Tuesday-Friday 9 a.m.-5 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m.-4 p.m.

Free and open to the public. Call for accessibility information.

For more on events, special programs and past exhibitions, visit www.exeter.edu/lamontgallery

20 Main Street Exeter, NH 03833-2460 Parents of Alumni: If this magazine is addressed to a son or daughter who no longer maintains a permanent address at your home, please email us (records@exeter.edu) with his or her new address. Thank you.

EXETER’S DAY OF GIVING

DECEMBER 6

Join the entire Exeter community for an online giving challenge: 1,727 gifts, in honor of each student and employee on campus, in one day! When we reach our goal, a leadership gift from a group of generous alumni and parents will be given to The Exeter Fund.

Together, we can rise to the challenge by investing in today’s students and providing them with excellence in and outside of the classroom.