provide the campuses with entertainment and cultural enrichment critical to resident student populations who lack easy access to off campus events.
The arts are also central to school mandates for personal expression and exploration and community participation. In a number of schools, performing arts, particularly dance, can serve to satisfy athletic requirements.
Not incidentally, the arts also serve as excellent public relations tools for the schools. School choral groups, dance and theatre presentations, and orchestral and jazz/pop concerts help enliven school admission programs, revisit days, parent weekends, graduation exercises, alumni events, and assorted school celebrations. Student artists serve as goodwill ambassadors when schools invite nearby community residents to student performances and exhibitions.
The schools promote the arts with extraordinary faculty and with facilities of a quality that often surpasses those at colleges or even in some instances those found in the professional arena. Students bringing high levels of arts talent help raise the bar for others looking to explore arts fields. It is no coincidence that many well known artists and performers have prep school backgrounds.
ACTIVITIES
Extracurricular activities – clubs, community service, travel programs, and the like - are a critical aspect of campus culture. Students are expected to participate as a matter of community involvement, but there is also an aspect of self-interest, since a commitment to school publications, leadership, and public service helps students gain the attention of college admissions officers. At American prep schools, activities serve as leadership opportunities for those who serve in student government, as editors of school publications, and as officers of community outreach clubs. Specialty clubs also act as laboratories for students to explore potential career options: debate club, investment club, engineering and science clubs, etc. The range of clubs and opportunities is staggering; many schools offer well over a hundred different clubs.
STUDENT SUPPORT SYSTEMS
American boarding schools typically offer extensive support systems for their students. Advisors are available around the clock. On campus health facilities offer an array of medical services. Many schools provide educational counselors and tutors, time management and organizational specialists, as well as nutritionists, physical therapists and trainers. Psychological and emotional health support, once nonexistent on boarding campuses, is now a central concern. Staff psychologists and counselors are on call for students experiencing depression, anxiety, or other personal issues, and faculty, staff, and student assistants are trained to identify students who may need help. Many schools require assemblies and student workshops to address issues of both misbehavior and wellness.
MISBEHAVIOR
Misbehavior on a boarding school campus, especially anything of a sexual or criminal nature, can be cause for parental concern. With a resident population of teenagers, the potential for trouble is always present. However, there is no data that suggests that boarding schools experience student misbehavior at comparable or higher rates than day or public schools. The close adult supervision tends to work to suppress bad behavior, but incidents do occur. Such events bear close attention if systemic administrative failures have resulted – failure to discover ongoing problems, failure to expose them once discovered, and/or failure to appropriately punish offenders – which speak to a collapse of leadership that will likely be evident in other less critical areas of that school’s life. Rules regarding misbehavior vary widely, but all schools have detailed specific procedures regarding various types of infraction as well as their severity. All is revealed in the school’s student manual. Students may ignore much of their school’s manual without much consequence, but understanding the school’s rules about misbehavior is essential Minor infractions typically involve behavior that does not involve aggression towards others or damage of property. Such offenses are usually punished by detention, loss of privileges and other short term restrictions. Major transgressions, involving threat or harm to others, property damage, or serious ethical lapses may be met with harsher punishments – longterm restriction of privileges, probation, suspension, or dismissal.
Some schools are “one strike”, meaning that the commission of one major offense is cause for expulsion. Others are “two strike” allowing a student to remain at school after a major offense, often with restrictions and on probation. The “two strike” provision does not apply to truly egregious misbehavior.
Cheating— including plagiarism – the claiming of written work by others as one’s own – has become common in all sorts of high schools, as students pull down texts from the Internet. Educators now use plagiarism detection software to identify these abuses, and punishments can be severe, including expulsion. Cheating likewise is often an expellable offense.
Sexual misconduct is one area subject to much scrutiny. Some schools have specific rules of conduct to ensure sexual encounters are clearly consensual. Despite these rules, sexual misconduct does occur, though this is rare, as it is at other types of high schools. To add more uncertainty, sexual misconduct laws vary widely from state to state.
Bullying, harassment, and hazing are also serious offenses. Bullying can occur in person, online, on the phone, and in other ways. Harassment, which can include sexual harassment, and prejudicial behavior because of one’s race, ethnicity, religion, gender, or sexuality can also occur in many forms and settings. Many schools have diversity officers trained in such issues who can respond to student reports of bias.
Illegal drug use is banned and alcohol use is forbidden to most students on most boarding campuses, though some schools allow alcohol to students who are legal adults under certain restricted circumstances. Schools work out their own policies for substance infractions. Some take a stern line with drugs but tend to treat alcohol much less harshly. Others are equally strict with both. Students caught selling drugs face immediate dismissal, and in the case of a serious criminal action, potential arrest. Some schools maintain sanctuary policies for students who take alcohol or drugs but then recognize their errors, self report their behavior and check into the student health center. Another common policy is nondisciplinary intervention (NDI), whereby a student or faculty member can alert a school official of a student’s alcohol or drug use, or a student can self report. The school then moves to help the offending student without disciplinary action.
Responses to criminal behavior may depend on the gravity of the offense. A petty theft might land a student on probation with warnings, but not expulsion or arrest. Repeated acts of theft that reveal a student unwilling or unable to reform, or a theft of real magnitude that sullies the school’s reputation may result in suspension, dismissal, or arrest.
Schools will go a long way to avoid such extreme measures. Once the school is aware of a problem, administrators will contact the parents to discuss the potential consequences. Such steps usually put a stop to the issue ahead of a major crisis. Detection of student problems is largely dependent on the web of communications systems that schools put into place. This includes faculty, advisors, student proctors, and the general population working together when someone becomes aware of serious malfeasance. Some school communities are decidedly better at this than others.
COLLEGE COUNSELING
As a rule, college advising at boarding schools is much more sophisticated than at public and day schools. Boarding school college counselors (CCs) often have long standing personal relationships with the admissions officers (AOs) of elite colleges. They often invite college AOs to campus, travel to colleges to lobby for their students, and closely advise the students about their applications.
College advising usually begins with general guidance for students in 9th and 10th grade, with admonitions to take rigorous courses in core subjects, participate in extracurricular activities (ECs) and service, and use summer
