To the Editor:

When I graduated one short year ago, the campus looked different. On a recent drive through Choate, I noticed that several imposing fences have appeared, separating the School’s pastoral fields from the streets of Wallingford. Another quite striking visual difference is the gargantuan new dorm that has gone up on North Elm Street. These developments are concerning, not only for their aesthetic qualities, but more importantly, for the message they communicate to the town that Choate inhabits.

The new dorm strikes an imposing presence, and the fences serve to create a subtle but firm barrier between the already estranged school and town. There is historical tension between students and the people who drive through the campus, as some Choate students show continuous disregard for traffic. The fences and new dorm communicate an posture of elitism-- a mindset from which Choate should try to distance itself. During the four years I spent at Choate, I prided myself and my school on being one of the more progressive New England prep schools, an institution that has done much to detach itself from its old roots of aristocracy and privilege. However, I feel that the message Choate is (possibly unwittingly) putting forth is a discomforting and potentially damaging step in the wrong direction.

I would guess that Choate has no plans to greatly increase its overall student population, so the existence of a massive new dorm can only mean one thing. I was interested to learn that there will be a drop in the percentage of day students over the next three years. Boarding students generally come from wealthier families, as the cost of boarding is about ten thousand dollars more than the cost of being a day student. This drop in day student numbers, coupled with the trimming down of the Icahn Scholars program over the past few years, would alter the economic character of the school’s students. I had thought Choate was committed to shedding its image as an elitist school for the rich, but these developments, again, seem like steps in the wrong direction.

I have also heard that there are to be two “check-ins” on Saturdays, a plan that is already being enacted on a trial basis this spring. This reeks of authoritarianism, used by the school administration when it can’t figure out a meaningful way to communicate with its students about alcohol or drugs. Among my fellow alums from the class of ’07 there are disturbing mutterings about how “we got out at the right time…” Is this really the image that Choate wants to be putting forth?

It seems clear to me that the board of trustees, and the higher-ups in the schools administration need to do some soul-searching. The trustees are woefully out of touch with the student body and faculty, as the ridiculous golf course misadventure of last year and this shows. Out of touch also seems an apt way to describe those in the administration in whom all the decisions are centered. The headmaster’s stubbornness about sit-down lunches in the face of almost universal student and faculty disapproval paints a picture of a school out of touch with its most important elements, the students and faculty. In a school-wide poll conducted by The News, 85.29% of faculty and 94.67% of students voted against sit-down lunches. The fact that the administration consulted students about their discontent with Karl Rove as graduation speaker is encouraging, and shows that the school’s power structure has the ability to listen to its students. Unfortunately, however, this rarely happens and it happened in this case after a firestorm of negative reaction erupted to the idea of Mr. Rove at Commencement.

I can only hope that Choate can clean up its act, but I fear that these changes are irreversible.



Michael Lee-Murphy ‘07