29 Flavors and Then Some

Each dorm on campus is a kind of social cauldron that, combining more or less the same ingredients, nonetheless turns out a unique brew. There are 29 residence halls on campus, housing the school's 846 boarding students: 20 multilevel "brick dorms" of anywhere from 18 to 60 students from all four classes and two to four faculty members; and nine houses of 10 to 16 uppers and seniors and generally one dorm faculty member. Each dorm also has from one to three dorm affiliates, faculty members who don't live in the building, but do duty, have advisees and participate in dorm events. The dorm faculty and faculty affiliates are academic advisers to students in the dorms. Student proctors assist the faculty in every aspect of running the dorm, and are an essential liaison to their peers. Though proctor selection in the spring varies from dorm to dorm, it is an evaluative process involving students and faculty. Other students in the dorm act as student listeners, who work with the school's counseling office, or liaisons to other groups on campus.

Something's cooking at Soule Hall

Students are assigned to a dorm when they come to the Academy, and most of them stay there for the duration of their Exeter careers, developing strong affinities for the places where they live. "When I'm up onstage and naming an individual who needs to check in with me after assembly," Russell Weatherspoon says, "the echo of voices from that person's housemates tells me the identification kids feel for their dorms is strong." Says Mischke, "The girls who live in Moulton love this dorm, and most can't imagine living anywhere else. I hear this over and over again from all different kinds of personalities."

For students, the dorm they live in is "the best dorm on campus" for any number of reasons. "In some dorms, a person might go for days without seeing someone because they don't live on the same floor," says Andrew Ma '03. "In Peabody [a dorm of 34], with such small spaces, that could never happen." Annie Riley '03 says, "McConnell Hall may not be the most aesthetically pleasing dorm-I've had friends from home look at pictures and comment on how it looks like a hospital. But it is the perfect size with about 36 girls, and offers the comforts of a close community while still having a diverse group of girls. The girls in my dorm are the most spirited, fun-loving and kind group of people I could ever hope to live with."

Custodians: The Unsung Heroes

If the students love their dorms, the custodians love their students. Because they are in the dorms early in the morning and during the day, and since they are not authority figures in the same way that teachers are, custodians can interact with students in different ways than dorm faculty do. Wentworth custodian Bob Robarge says, "I think the students are closer to the custodians than to anyone else. When they come in as preps and you see them every day, it gets to be like they were your own kids."

Custodians are an important, if unsung, part of the dorm team, and can often be the first to know of a problem in the dorm that needs to be addressed, like an eating disorder. Says Keeble, "In my experience, if they are really concerned, they usually find a way to let the faculty know without breaking the trust of the kids." Heidi Burwell, custodian in Hoyt, says, "The girls come and talk to me and tell me their problems. And I remind them that they are children and not adults." She adds, "I have never been treated with anything but respect." In many dorms, students leave notes on their doors asking to be woken up. "I'll tell the girls I'm not leaving the room until they are out of bed," says Burwell, "or else they'll be sleeping through class."

Al Landry says he likes to ask the boys in Webster about their sports and games because "it helps take some of the pressure off them, and their parents aren't here to tell them they're doing great job." For him, the best part of working in the dorm is "when the kids come down the stairs in the morning, look me in the eye and say, 'Good Morning, Al.' Then you know you're part of the team."

When Langdell's custodian Debbie Paquette left midyear to get married, "the girls were crushed," says history instructor Amy Schwartz. "Cindy Chang '02 and Julia Liu '02 spent an entire day making a video for her with all of the kids on it. We had a party and showed her the video and gave her tickets to a NASCAR race. It was pretty moving."

Making the Dorms Work

Different cultures reflect what is unique about each dorm, and residential life would be poorer without them. But these cultures exist within an increasingly deliberate and unifying framework of policies and support systems. "The dean of student's office offers many more services than they did when I came to Exeter 14 years ago," notes Ethan Shapiro, who thinks one of the most significant additions was the creation of the dean of residential life position in 2001. In that role, Weatherspoon (whom one grateful colleague has nicknamed "Roaming Russell") is "on the ground" at all hours of the day and night visiting the spaces where residential life happens and interacting with the people who are living it. "If our residential program is going to be comparable to our academic program," says Weatherspoon, "then we have to be looking at whether we are actually doing the things that we say we are committed to doing, supporting people and holding them accountable."

In 1995, the Academy made a commitment to residential life by adopting the Residential Life Statement (see below). This commitment has since been renewed through goals articulated by the Academy Master Plan process and other innovations on campus. In 1999, the Dorm Heads Committee introduced Academy Life Day, a day set aside early in the school year for every dorm to make a group excursion of its own devising off campus. Recent renovations of Cilley (2000) and Amen (2002) have improved faculty apartments with the goal of stabilizing in dorm teams, added common spaces for socializing and reduced the number of students rooms to achieve student-faculty ratios more conducive to relationships and renewal. The most significant new initiative on the horizon is the planned renovation of Thompson Science Building into an Academy Center that will offer the community at large much of what the dorms offer their smaller communities.

Adequate training for dorm staff is also part of the expanded support system. "While planning the Cilley renovation, our committee began asking some real questions about residential life at Exeter," says Shapiro. "Is it something that some people do well and others don't? The committee agreed that while teachers might be more or less inclined to embrace the residential side of boarding school, the necessary skills and knowledge were teachable." Shapiro saw opportunity, and shortly before the start of school this year, the third Residential Life Institute for new dorm faculty took place. The institute features readings, workshops and panels with experienced dorm faculty and key members of staff from all areas of the Academy and covers, in part, advising, crisis management, reporting laws, disciplinary and nondisciplinary responses, counseling and listening skills and how to balance residential, academic, personal and professional life. "Dorm faculty need tools, training and support," says Shapiro. "We want new teachers to see that at Exeter there is a whole range of models for successful dorm leadership." This fall also saw the first institute workshops for new dorm heads, who may not have the necessary administrative skills. "Running a larger dorm where you have multiple members of a dorm team," says Barbara Eggers, "means working to bring people together, especially on dorm and school policies."