Updated Freshman Phone Policy

The Class of 2028 was the first in Deerfield’s history with a cell phone policy that required students to turn in their phones at 10:30pm on school nights. A recent update will extend this policy for the Class of 2028 to their sophomore year. According to an email sent by Associate Head of School for Student Life Amie Creagh, teachers will “collect cell phones on school nights in 10th-grade dorms and store them in lockers until morning,” continuing the current policy in the Village.

The Student Life Office (SLO) instituted the cell phone policy during the 2024–25 academic year to further prioritize student well-being. Dean of Students Samuel Bicknell said, “We [the Student Life Office] are always looking at ways students can have time to turn off.” Bicknell described the cornerstone of this policy, which is “having your phone not in the same room makes you sleep better.” Bicknell noted that, “I think that positives outweigh the negatives, what we want is for students to get a good sleep and research would show that especially for ninth grade students it’s really important that they get a good sleep. Putting phones away from their bedside helps facilitate that.” Additionally, the Student Life Office looked at how the phone policy during the academic day has impacted students’ daily life, such as increased face-to-face interactions.

However, the members of the Class of 2028 reported a variety of experiences. Cole Bannon ’28 explained that despite “strongly believ[ing] that having my phone less at night would help me be on my phone less than during the day and be more productive at night... this phone policy made me want to be on my phone more in the afternoon so I try to call my friends and my parents after school as much as possible.” Bannon added, “we should definitely be able to have our phones next year.”

Jewel Suh ’28 acknowledges the benefits of this policy for freshmen, explaining that “I think [the policy] forced me to get good study habits and it helped my sleep schedule a lot, especially for international students with jetlag.”

Contrary to Suh, Tommy Li ’28 described the experience as “utterly preposterous. It’s ridiculous because if you really need your phone, you could just download a movie on your computer and still not sleep.”

English Teacher and Johnson resident Piper Higgins corroborates this, explaining that teachers have not accounted for “iPads, smart watches, and computers, given that it seems like the resources students have on their phones are often available on those devices.” He cites “the infinite workload” as the root problem of students’ insufficient sleep and urges the SLO or deans to “please cancel this policy as soon as possible. I call this bullying and we must defend our rights.”

As a dorm resident, Ms. Higgins shared her observations on the effects of the policy. “Students have adapted fairly well to using an alarm clock and to not having their phones at night... There isn’t as much of a struggle as I would have expected,” she said. Ms. Higgins elaborates that “students are mostly willing to put their phones in the locker. When I’m on duty... if I have to track a student down who might have forgotten [to turn in their phone], I’ll do that.” Over the course of the year, Ms. Higgins believes that “students understand the benefit of it [the policy]. I think students want to get sleep... and they know that this policy is to help them get sleep.” As students will benefit from increased sleep, she elaborates that “we’re all kind of on the same team in that regard... I don’t know if it’s willingness per se, but I think there’s an understanding.”

“As the general grade wide reaction, everyone was (for lack of a better word) upset about it,” said Freshman Student Council Representative Casey Lee ’28. She cites transparency and trust as major factors as “[the freshmen class] was told that at the end of the year people would have their phones and there was that expectation... but then they tell us [the new policy] in the middle of the year.”

Many students have expressed concern over the way this phone policy is shaping their relationship with technology, questioning whether the policy achieves its goal of improving students’ wellbeing. Although it may seem counterintuitive, students such as Eloise Forrest ’28 believe that this causes less social interaction after study hall. Forrest noticed this “very frequently. Everyone is on our phones because it’s our only chance, especially right after study hall and no one socialises.”

Supplementing the position that students are attached to their phones after study hall, Ethan Pang ’28 said, “I don’t love it, I guess in theory it helps me with my sleep but sometimes I guess me and my friends we want to use our phones more just because they’re taking it away.”

This phone policy also has left many students having to work harder to find ways to get their work done. Suh noted that, “once you become a sophomore there’s students in different levels of coursework that require more time and because the wifi goes down at 11 p.m., you can’t do work past then. Even when I’m on my phone last night it’s not for the purpose of scrolling, it’s usually for a hotspot for my computer to do work.” Suh has already found it difficult to get her work done, and to compensate for this, she must “get up early in the morning... I am also someone who goes to open swim so it’s frustrating that I can’t do that because I need to do my work from the night before.”

The email from Ms. Creagh stated that after spring break, Mr. Philie will form a Class of 2028 advisory group that will have conversations with the SLO to discuss the nuances between the 2024–2025 and the 2025–2026 cell phone policies. Mr. Bicknell said that “loosening restrictions is a part of the discussions [with the advisory group and that] there are numerous possibilities that will arise.” In the email containing updates about the policies, Ms. Creagh said that these compromises “could include expanded WiFi access in sophomore dorms and a shift toward voluntary phone collection in the spring term,” which Mr. Bicknell explained is a part of “the tiered process getting to junior year.”

However, Lee said that she “doesn’t know if they have involved any of the student leaders as far as I’m concerned, or at least in the freshman grade reps...[when] we reached out to Mr. Philie to talk about [the phone policy], he said it’s mainly Dr. Austin’s decision.” She added that “there wasn’t any middle management, such as polling the students or asking the [student] reps to represent how the students are feeling.” According to Lee, the grade representatives are hoping to “have a presentation or proposal to shorten the time [of the policy’s enforcement]... we’re not sure if it’s going to be accepted, but we can at least try.”

Further, she says that “[the sophomore policy] doesn’t set you up for success considering the fact that... we don’t have study hall in junior year.” Ms. Higgins supports this point, saying “that it makes sense to give students more freedom with their phones as they get a little older, to give them a responsibility to manage it themselves.”

Despite the many complications and concerns that students have brought up, Lee said that “it seems that they’re very set on having it [the policy] in sophomore year.”