On Tuesday, many of you may have seen a new addition to our wonderful community – a beautiful black fence. While passed off as a preemptive measure for our community’s safety, our new fence not only betrays the values we as an institution claim to uphold, but is logistically impractical, and made totally without student input.
On November 9th, 2016, when Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, Mr. Cairo stood in the Upper School Auditorium and told us, the student body, that he did not represent our values, our beliefs, and our morals. But now, almost a year after his inauguration, the school appears to have beat him to the punch; built a wall to keep us safe, to keep the “bad hombres” out if you will. Tell me the irony is not lost on you, Mr. Cairo. Because next time the school is getting ramrodded by Fox News, The New York Post, and Breitbart the irony will not be lost on them. When Tucker Carlson or Sean Hannity is broadcasting to the world how an elitist liberal high school in the northeast who doesn’t care for the president built a wall to keep bad people out, how can we with a straight face defend ourselves. It is honestly quite comical.
While the ideal of the workingman’s school may have been kissed goodbye long ago, this takes it to a new level. Felix Adler, who founded this school on the principles of diversity and inclusion, is rolling over in his grave at the concept of fencing ourselves in. Think of the message we send to the world with the black metallic monstrosity serving as our façade. It reeks of exclusion, elitism, and aristocracy. We have never been perfect holders of Adler’s founding principles, but this wall is nothing but another step, and a daily physical reminder of our massive failure in upholding our guiding principles.
Beyond betraying the core values of our school, the institution of the wall is beyond logistically impractical. With a student body of 600 upper school students who mainly enter school during a 20-minute window from 8:00-8:20, the institution of mandatory student checks would require security guards to check one ID every 6 seconds, assuming an equal distribution of students on all three entryways, for everyone to get into campus in that window. If you double that time to 12 seconds per Student ID check then around 150 students will be late to their first period class every day. This of course isn’t even counting faculty and staff that use the entrance to the Upper School by Manhattan College Parkway.
Furthermore, this decision was made without the consultation of the students and any reference to the wall was buried in an attachment to an email sent to students and instead referred to as “some modifications on the campus perimeter.” I assure you this is not some modification, this is a straight up Trump-esque barrier built on the perimeter of our campus. So Fieldston, why wouldn’t you tell us it straight u. Were you concerned with a backlash.
Finally, the argument for campus safety is comical. Will a small black fence and a few guard posts truly stop someone from coming in. The only way to truly prevent the worst-case scenario – an armed intruder infiltrating our grounds – would be to arm the guards and train them to shoot. Is that a step that we are willing to take? If it’s not, the defense of the fence for safety concerns is totally invalid for it cannot really prevent the worst-case scenario. Furthermore in my four years on campus their has been one singular incident on campus. An alumnus earlier this year who entered under the guise of a visit and had some level of a mental breakdown in the 200s building, almaring and scarring both students and faculty. While, I agree one incident is too many, is this the drastic precaution we should resort to? This was merely a lapse in security, do we really need to barricade ourselves in.
We have cameras already in the gym, and now a beautiful wall to keep “bad people” out. So, what’s next? Random backpack searches? Scanning in and out of campus? Tracking our every movement? Fieldston let me know where the ball stops, because now I honestly cannot figure out if I am looking at the school that I love or an elitist institution full of hypocrites and run by secret police. Is this Fieldston or the Soviet Union? Is this our campus or Checkpoint Charlie? Somebody please let me know.
