Student speaks out for students' rights

Ingrid Haeckel

As those of you on the Buildings and Grounds Committee already know, students in the Environmental Action Group have spent the past ten weeks researching the proposed new dorm, Harold Smith, and organizing a growing opposition towards further building on Deerfield's main quad. This culminated in a presentation at school meeting on December 12th, in which we presented Mr. Widmer with a petition signed by 538 students and faculty opposed to building on that land, as well as a summary of student ideas for alternative sites where a dorm could be built or renovated to accommodate twenty students.

We received a reply from Mr. Widmer two days later, saying that he had reviewed these ideas, but that the proposed land beckons to have a small dormitory there and that Harold Smith would be an aesthetically pleasing, successful solution. At this point we sent out a letter to nine of the trustees, attaching the petition and signatures as well as student generated alternatives. As of now, we have received a response from one Trustee.

The response and lack thereof to these events has been enormously disappointing and yet provoking on several levels. As a four-year member of this community, I have come to question whether dialogue, which Deerfield stresses as being important, actually has any effect on how decisions are made.

The Environmental Action Group's work in collecting the community's opinions on campus building and development lies piled around my room in the form of surveys, quad memories, dorm proposals from our contest, signatures against building on the quad and student reflections on the enormous value of open space to Deerfield's identity. All of these come together, as they did in our presentation, to prove that an overwhelming majority of our community is opposed to further building on the land next to John Williams. Even beyond that point, students were willing to go so far as to brainstorm alternatives. As Mr. Boyden said, "Anyone can have a quadrangle, but this is a country school." Preserving our open land is a heritage to be worthy of and a responsibility to carry on. Clearly, we proved that most of the community agrees. So, when we presented all of this to the Administration, we expected a response.

Mr. Widmer's letter failed to address the desire of students and faculty alike to build elsewhere, and stated only that our suggestions had proven inadequate. Finding the perfect solution is not our problem. That doesn't mean we should be denied a true response. While we continue waiting for one, we have time to dig deeper into the underlying problem, which is that such major decisions as approving Harold Smith are most often made before students and faculty have even heard about them. We only discovered the existence of this new dorm two weeks before it was approved, although it had been in planning for five years.

Even more recently, the community was shocked to wake up to billowing smoke as the fifty-year-old stand of cedars surrounding the tennis courts on the lower level was burnt to the ground. Only once the burning had begun did students and faculty learn about it, and even then we were given false reasons for the burning before learning that it was to make way for a renovation of the area.

Again, as a four-year member of the community I realize that I am lucky if I find out about a major renovation or change on campus before it happens, and that even if I do and the majority of my peers oppose this project, our opinions will go unrecognized. I find this extremely disconcerting.

At this point, many of my peers and I feel that the supposedly open dialogue between students and the administration, including the trustees, is, in fact, closed. We cannot continue to live in this community, in this state, without a voice. The lack of response to students in regards to the dorm is just one in many instances of this problem. What is driving change and development on campus at Deerfield? For now, students obviously aren't. That doesn't mean we haven't been trying to.