2
Adapting for the Future
As we began our
budgeting process
earlier this winter,
our IT director sug-
gested we discontinue
technical support for
hard-wired phones
in all student rooms.
He explained that our
students no longer
use landline phones.
I was assured that discontinuing this service
would not compromise the safety of our students,
who would still have landline access, if they ever
needed it, in their house common rooms. So,
landline phones died quietly in a budget meeting.
I remember the introduction of phones in stu-
dent rooms 20 years ago. In the opening faculty
meeting of the 1995-96 school year it was an-
nounced, somewhat matter of factly, that the
capital project to wire every student’s room for
phone service had been completed over the sum-
mer and that plans were being made on how to
provide each student with a telephone. As a new
faculty member who admittedly was not involved
in any conversation related to the project, I was
taken aback by the announcement that students
would soon have phones in their rooms. Hadn’t
anyone thought through the impact those phones
would have on our community? I imagined that
students would no longer stop by to see each other,
to say hello or suggest walking together to Chapel
or the Upper. Students would be imprisoned by the
inertia of easy telephone conversation. The unravel-
ing of the SPS community was surely underway.
Feeling the School needed to be saved, I announced
the formation of Faculty Against Telephones, better
known as FAT among its two or three loyal members.
FAT was a proud, but ineffective, force against
the introduction of student telephones. The group’s
only small triumph was asking the administration
good questions: How will this technology advance
our mission? How will it build community? The
only answer I remember hearing about the motive
behind the project was something akin to “because
we can.”
It turns out my fears about the impact of such
a primitive technology as landline telephones
were overblown, at least temporarily. Students
and teachers still communicated face-to-face,
still smiled at one another in person – they still
do. But thinking back to those earlier concerns, it
seems FAT’s notion about the risks of technology
may not have been completely out of place. These
risks were recently summarized in the title of MIT
sociologist Sherry Turkle’s book
Alone Together:
Why We Expect More from Technology and Less
from Each Other
.
The complex issue of how technology is chang-
ing relationships is very much on our minds at
the School. In June, Dr. Turkle and other scholars
and school leaders from around the country will
join us for a St. Paul’s School symposium entitled
“Empathy, Intimacy, and Technology in a Boarding
School Environment.” Our purpose is ambitious:
To explore the dynamic nature of adolescent
relationships in this century. You will hear more
about this exciting event as it approaches.
I began this letter with an anecdote about how
budget considerations can involve issues of
enormous consequence. The “because we can”
attitude that once informed many of our spending
ideas has evolved into one of “because we should.”
This disciplined approach, which over the last
decade has motivated strategic planning and
budget decisions, is due in large part to the lead-
ership of Bill Matthews ’61 during a recession.
Strategic plans, established in careful, community-
wide discussions, now drive the direction and
growth of our program.
I look forward to beginning the next strategic
planning process during the 2016-17 school year.
Without preempting that process, the next plan
must include specific initiatives directing the
evaluation of our current program against our
mission, to thoughtfully test curricula and daily
life against our aspiration to build community
and serve the greater good. I also anticipate
an ambitious plan that, although it may seem
counterintuitive, will likely have us doing less but
doing it better, and in ways that will strengthen
and sustain our School.
PETER FINGER
RECTOR
