This past Saturday, every boarding student at Choate partook in the newest weekend activity the school has to offer—a mandatory check-in any time from 7:30 to 9:00 P.M. with the adviser on duty in the respective dorms. The new rule, which took effect on the first weekend of May and will continue into next year, left students and even some advisers slightly irritated.

To many of the boarders, this action gave the impression that the administration was making life difficult by restricting the freedom and mobility of Saturday nights. Some have complained about the mandatory interruption to Saturday nights, while others simply forgot about it until the very last minute.

Being a boarder myself, I think it’s just an unnecessary measure that is more of a nuisance than anything else. The administration’s main reason for putting the rule into effect was that on a normal weekend at home, no student would go a full day without any contact with adults. In other words, if something were to happen during the twenty-four and a half-hour period between check-ins on Friday and Saturday, the administration would be chagrined to tell parents that none of the adults on campus had seen their son or daughter in a full day.

But what, may I ask, is the practical difference between twenty hours and twenty-four? If a student really were missing, would administrators feel more comfortable telling parents that their child appeared fine at 7:30 check-in? Furthermore, what kind of student at this school could possibly avoid interacting with faculty members for a full day? I know from past experience that I’ve never been able to dodge teachers altogether for a whole day, even when I’ve tried. Whether it’s at sporting events, extracurricular activities, or even just in passing, I’ve not yet, in my three years here, had a single Saturday when I didn’t see a teacher I knew fairly well.

Not that seeing teachers regularly is a bad thing. In fact, I may be in the minority as a student who enjoys interacting with teachers just as much as I do hanging out with my friends. I personally don’t mind stopping by my dorm to greet my advisers and tell them about my plans for the night. That said, I don’t think it’s right for the school to force students and their advisers to meet on Saturday nights in such an obligatory manner as check-in, when both parties may have had to drastically alter their plans for the night to do so. It merely causes more stress and work for both advisers and advisees and creates reason for mutual irritation, which is never a good thing.

To give credit where credit is due, the administrators have a tough job. They have to make and enforce rules in response to specific student incidents and the requests of angry parents. On top of that, they have to find a middle ground that strives to agree with various constituencies faculty, students, and parents-- but which invariably ends up getting one or more of the groups wound up—usually the students.

Recently, however, it seems that the student body and administration have waged war on each other, with all the new rules and regulations and the new student issues and rule violations. Since my third-form year, back when the Deerfield Day Pep Rally wasn’t lame and all co-ed was created equal, the school has cracked down on the student body with particular force, inevitably backed by weapons like Mr. Ford’s glare. From the new check-in rule for all boarders to the strict co-ed restrictions for freshmen to the mandatory health classes for sophomores, each year seems to place a heavier burden on its students than the previous one. And each year, more and more students are falling under the pressures mounting all around them.

Looking back on my Choate experience thus far from an older and maybe more biased perspective, I don’t think I would have even considered enrolling if I could have foreseen the early check-ins on Saturdays, required health classes, and strict co-ed rules. And I say this as a student who, since enrolling, has found absolutely no reason to even remotely dislike this school.

Choate’s newest rules are placing walls around the freedoms that I so thoroughly enjoyed as a younger student, and I can’t help but sympathize with the underformers who inherit the consequences of the stupid mistakes of some of my peers. At the same time, I sometimes get the feeling that the administration has been using us older students as scapegoats to implement the very rules that it’s been meaning to put into effect for so long.

The cycle is seemingly endless, and the chicken-and-egg question—whether the administration is “tightening the leash” because of student misdemeanor or students are misbehaving because of the strict new rules—is nothing more than a chance for both parties to point fingers and act with mutual suspicion. Is the increased level of strictness in the past few years a way of telling us students to shape up and behave? Or is it just becoming easier for students to get in trouble because the rules seem to change every year?

I can’t say that I know the answer to these questions. All I do know is that students and administrators alike can learn a great deal about themselves and each other from the clear trends in rule-making and rule-breaking that have developed over recent years. In my opinion, Choate is way overdue for a big heart-to-heart between student representatives and administrators.