Opinion: We're not Upholding the Deerfield Pledge

“I will act with respect, integrity, and care for others, and I will seek to inspire the same values in our community and beyond.” That’s the community pledge that we’ve all heard. It’s plastered on our classroom walls, posted on bulletin boards across dorms, and the Student Life Office’s emphasis on it is tangible across campus. The Deerfield community does many things that embody this mission: we hold doors for the people walking behind us, say "hello" to those we encounter on the way to class, and embody a sense of unity that permeates throughout bleacher stands, pep rallies, and agachi chants. However, below the surface, the student body does not embody this mission so well. At the first all school meeting every year, the sixteen peer counselors stand on the Large Auditorium stage and each share one of their vulnerabilities with the entire school in hopes of making someone in the audience feel less alone in their struggles. As he shared with the Deerfield community in his Convocation Address, I agree with Mr. John Leistler that this is a “brave thing.” Yet apparently, significant portions of the student body don’t agree with this assessment. While those peer counselors were onstage, I heard giggling coming from various parts of the sophomore section. While I hoped this experience was exclusive to the sophomore section, I quickly found that this was not the case. Through conversation with many friends and classmates, it became apparent that this case of “the giggles” permeated through every portion of the student body. During the 2023 Deerfield Forum, Yale University professor Akhil Reed Amar spoke about constitutional law and recommended that Deerfield students read his book, The Words That Made Us. Instead of listening respectfully, the student body loudly burst into laughter. On September 24, 2025, Harvard professor Dr. Allison Wood Brooks gave a talk on the behavioral science of conversation. Throughout her presentation, she needed to repeatedly quiet the student body before continuing. As these examples show, the student body often violates the community pledge and the values it stands for. Yet despite their emphasis on respect, the SLO and faculty body in general rarely respond to these infractions. Before moving on, it's important to recognize the difference between explicit and implicit violations of the pledge. Violations are explicit when the SLO can quantify the physical or monetary damage inflicted by the infraction. They’re implicit when they can’t—such as when unidentifiable individuals act disrespectfully during school meetings. In my observation, the SLO in particular has responded quite directly to explicit breaches of the community values. Last year’s April Fools pranks serve as a primary example. The SLO provided no formal response to a group of freshman girls printing out hundreds of pictures of a fellow male classmate and hanging them around Johnson, or a group of sophomore boys deconstructing furniture in LM. It was only when people's computers malfunctioned, or an international student couldn't return home for break, that the SLO intervened with a formal response through early curfew or mandatory cleanups. I believe the main reason the SLO intervened in these cases was not only because it violated community values, but resulted in clear, monetary damages. Instead of their current response, I believe SLO needs to find a middle-ground between formally responding to both explicit and implicit infractions of the community pledge. Instead of universal mandatory cleanups or early curfews, which sparked discontent amongst students and fomented, what I believe to be, a culture of distrust between the student body and the SLO, faculty and members of the SLO should push students to reflect on how much they can personally live up to the pledge. This isn't to say that the SLO can go completely hands off. When a significant portion of the student body acts in a manner that directly contradicts the values of the pledge in a rude and unacceptable way, the SLO and individual faculty—including Dr. Austin—should provide a formal reminder or response to the student body, rather than responding with silence. I believe that every member of the Deerfield community agrees, at least in principle, with the values staked in the student pledge. However, the student body requires reminders for when they stray too far from it. These reminders shouldn't be just limited to the general “remember to be kind” presentations that the SLO periodically gives during school meetings. Instead, they need to be intentional and direct, pointing out precisely which parts of student behavior were unacceptable. Then, the SLO and faculty should give students space and freedom to grow. I believe that the SLO's lack of formal response to implicit infractions of the community pledge shows that they don’t actually prioritize the pledge in practice. When the majority of the student body is aware of widespread violation of Deerfield community values and sees the SLO displaying no opposition to it, I believe it propagates the idea that unacceptable behavior is okay. Currently, I believe the SLO is not holding up its community values enough. It doesn’t do enough to ingrain them into the Deerfield community, and it does nothing when they are violated. To claim they stand for the values in the community pledge, the SLO must take a more proactive role in addressing community action.