For some, Wednesday, Nov. 6 may have felt like a typical day at the Upper School (US). The hallways weren’t filled with mass hysteria or celebratory outbursts. Public breakdowns occurred with no more frequency than normal. Still, a muted, somber mood hung over the school. That morning, shortly after 5:30 a.m., The Associated Press called the 2024 Presidential Election for Donald J. Trump after he won Wisconsin’s 10 electoral college votes, pushing the Republican candidate past the 270-vote threshold.
Trump won 321 electoral votes, compared to Democratic nominee Kamala Harris’ final tally of 226, and all seven swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Additionally, Trump won the popular vote—the only Republican candidate to do so since 1988.
In Massachusetts, however, 63.1% of voters supported Harris, according to a report by WBUR. Out of all 95 towns US students reside in, only two voted in majority for Trump: Saugus and Pembroke. An average of just over 84% of US students and faculty indicated that they would or were planning to support Harris for president in a recent Vanguard survey (see Volume 53, Issue 5: “2024 Election”). This data proves one consistent truth: The school, although Democratic leaning, is not a monolith.
Reflecting on Election Day, US Director Jessica Keimowitz emphasized the importance of not making assumptions.
“We know from the Vanguard data, and I would argue from some anecdotal stuff, there also is a range of emotion, in terms of some people feeling really validated and pleased with the result, and others feeling somber and overwhelmed by the result,” she said.
The school’s leadership team began conversations about how to approach a changing political climate months before November. Last summer, as a part of that effort, Ms. Keimowitz and eight other faculty members worked with Essential Partners, a group that aims to provide leaders with a formal structure for difficult conversations, to learn a method called reflective structured dialogue. The leadership team’s broad goal was to implement better support systems than they offered in 2016 when “things spilled out of the classroom,” Ms. Keimowitz said.
Faculty engaged in a reflective structured dialogue a few weeks before the election to discuss guidelines and strategies for talking about politics with students.
“A lot of what we talked to faculty about was, how do we make space for faculty to process their own personal reactions, so that then they could be a vessel for that processing for students without making it personal to them, which, by the way, is really hard,” Ms. Keimowitz said. “We know that the personal is political, and so how do you deal with that and make sure that all of the students in your class or your advisory or your team, wherever you are, feel that they can share whatever they need to share, even if it’s actually opposed to what you think or believe?”
One of those guidelines aimed to prevent teachers from openly sharing their political views in their classrooms.
“You cannot be partisan with your classes,” she said. “That’s very different than upholding our school values. So, it would not have been okay for me to walk into a classroom and state who I was voting for or tell people I thought they should vote that way … There can be an implicit suggestion that students who don’t agree are somehow not in line or not favorable.”
Now, the school’s administration is in a “sort of liminal space of waiting” for Trump’s inauguration, Ms. Keimowitz explained. Some of the Trump campaign’s political platforms, such as defunding or abolishing the Department of Education, implementing universal school choice, carrying out mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, and changing existing healthcare policies and systems, could affect US students and their families. In those instances, the school is prepared to stand behind its values: integrity, inquiry, belonging, and kindness.
“I think we need to be ready,” she said. “I don’t even know what we need to be ready to do, but we just need to be aware that even though we are an independent school and even though we are in Cambridge and even though we are in Massachusetts, the reach of the federal government is significant.”
When asked whether the school has adopted a policy of institutional neutrality—the belief that educational institutions should refrain from taking positions on social or political issues—or plans to, Ms. Keimowitz instead offered the term “non-partisan” to describe the school’s intent.
“You can adhere to our school’s values and be a card-carrying member of the Republican Party or the Libertarian Party or the Green Party or the Democratic Party, I don’t care. Those are not meant to be partisan. They’re meant to be not neutral but values that we really believe in.”
Ultimately, the school’s values and policies are centered in helping students make educated decisions for themselves, Ms. Keimowitz said.
“The goal in all of our classes is to expose students to multiple perspectives and help students figure out what they think and believe. It’s really about developing a person’s own sense of inquiry and integrity, not what the school tells you it should be.”
In an effort to promote honest, open political discourse, The Vanguard invited the US community to anonymously share their feelings about the results of the 2024 Presidential Election. Here is a selection of their responses:
