A Boarding School Is Born
Though it was founded in 1781, Exeter did not become a boarding school in the modern sense until 1935, the first year that the entire boarding population was housed on campus. For its first 74 years, Exeter had no dorms at all; students boarded with families in town, paying for meals and amenities that varied in cost, quantity and quality from place to place. In 1850, the trustees permitted "an experiment in dormitory living" in Williams House, modeled on an 1849 "club" in the Phillips buildings on Tan Lane. The object of clubbing was economy: the older boys managed, a hired matron did the work and the cost to each boy was significantly less than that of boarding in town.
On the strength of this success, the trustees voted in 1852 to build a permanent dormitory on campus. Abbot Hall was completed in 1855, providing room (at $1 per year) and board (billed at cost) for 50 of the school's 116 students. Over the next 75 years, the Academy continued to build dorms and acquire houses in town to accommodate its growing population. In the late 1920s, however, some 100 boys were still boarding in town, scholarship students lived exclusively in Abbot Hall and even campus boarding fees varied, depending on a boy's accommodations.
 |
Kirtland House coverup
Helen Johnston '03 and S.C. Baum '03
|
In 1929, Edward Harkness challenged the school to revolutionize the system of learning and living at Exeter, particularly with an eye to preventing the struggling student from being lost. The plan he approved and underwrote in 1930 included not only the eponymous seminar-style classroom we know today, but also a new "house system" in which the ratio of students to adviser was no more than 12, and students might live in the same building for their last three years at Exeter. Twenty-five new teachers, four new dormitories and extensive renovations to existing ones were required before the Harkness plan could be put in place. But by 1935, with a student enrollment of about 700, Exeter was housing all of its boarders (charging them a "flat fee" for tuition, room and board) and 54 faculty members, most with families, in residence halls on campus. By 1977, five more brick dorms had been built, and girls from all four classes were living in the dorms.
|
A Day in the Life
Of a Day Student
"I win. You're gone. I annihilated you. You are crushed," Ben informed me, sweeping the thousands of dollars and other Monopoly pieces back into the box.
After five hours on the last day of tests, the game was over. It had provided us with a valuable lesson: board games are not allowed on Floor 2 of the library. A librarian had arrived to tell us to leave if we wanted to finish our game. It wasn't that we were making a lot of noise-we weren't-only the library is not a place for games. Carrying the box through the drizzly, muggy morning, with wads of orange bills in our pockets, Casey, Ben and I headed to the Amen Room in the Davis Student Center.
 | |
A few minutes later, our usual day student group from Floor 2 showed up-we move in packs. Casey, Ben and I resumed play. Then some lowers came in and played a few intense games of foosball on the almost-new table. Some wanted to join our game, but we were too far into it to consider restarting. The rain began to pour; we closed the balcony doors. Lunch passed us by; we three capitalists played on brutally. Only when Casey fell to bankruptcy did we realize we were kind of hungry, but Ben and I continued. The hotels went up and were sold off to pay debts; we cackled evilly at each other's financial misfortunes. I landed on Boardwalk and Park Place three times in three trips around the board. That was the end. Ben quickly picked up and went to run an errand.
I miss the DSC. The library is a place for quiet study, not a group discussion about our favorite cartoons. I know we uppers and seniors are supposed to be more mature as upperclassmen, but no one studies all the time. Boarders have their common rooms, prep and lower day students have the DSC, and we have study carrels and tables for hushed tutoring. When the new Academy Center opens, I hope we'll be able to joke around without looking over our shoulders.
-Heather Olson '03
Day Student
|
|
