by Steve Murray, Dean of Students

Asked to comment on some aspect of Deerfield life, my first thought was to discuss senior leadership. Seniors are setting an excellent example and leading the school through a positive year. In the end I decided to focus on our proctors, both day and boarding, partly because the role they play is so essential to the success of the school year, and partly because I have been so impressed by their spirit and positive attitude this year.

Proctoring is often a thankless job with little public recognition, and it requires students to make quite a commitment during their senior year. For boarders, this means sacrificing the opportunity to live in a choice room on a corridor with friends. Instead, they spend their senior year living with freshmen and sophomores giving them important guidance and being a big brother or big sister. For day proctors, they are also given the responsibility of guiding a group of freshmen and sophomores, and they use their experience and influence to help these students integrate more fully into campus life. Precious free time in the course of a busy day for these students is often spent in the role of proctor.

We choose proctors through a very selective process during their junior year. We end junior year with an overnight retreat to instill confidence, and we begin senior year with an orientation session at Woolman Hill. We schedule all proctors to meet with Dr. Bicknell and/or Ms. Lord on a regular basis throughout the year to provide support, professional advice, and a forum to problem solve issues. This is a sound combination of preparation and on-going support, but regardless of the preparation, at a certain point we have to let go and trust that the proctors will do their jobs responsibly. They are carefully chosen, thoughtfully prepared, and then they need to be given some space to work.

I recently was reminded of just how much we trust in the proctors and how much the school community relies on them. In October, the Board of Trustees invited a group of proctors to appear before them and to discuss their work. I was lucky enough to be present and to hear the proctors describe the day-to-day issues they confront. An outsider would have thought that we had carefully scripted what the proctors said, but it was entirely spontaneous. They discussed why they chose to be proctors and then discussed ways in which they intervene with younger students. All of the adults in the room could not have been more impressed with the articulate, confident way in which these students described the challenges of their jobs.

All of this is to say that proctors play a tremendous role in the life of the school. If Deerfield prides itself on being a close-knit, spirited community, proctors do much of the community building for present and future classes, freshman by freshman and sophomore by sophomore. To respect the work of the proctors then, is to respect the school. And, by the same token, when we disrespect proctors, we disrespect something which cuts to core of what we value at Deerfield.

I will end my comments with heartfelt thanks to the proctors for showing, day in and day out, how much they care about the school. By the same token, I want to end by asking each and every member of the community to work equally hard to show our appreciation and respect for all that our proctors do for us.