Bridges to Lamp Posts
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Isabel Hunt ’26
The room is a bustling mess of papers, laptops, and half-finished headlines. The faint buzz of tension mixing with the click of keys. Someone’s debating a headline. Another sighs as an article gets flagged for review, the cursor blinking where a sentence one stood. This is a scene that occurs at many high schools across the country.
Through working as a Lamplighter reporter for the past four years, I have seen firsthand what kind of conversations take place in the Editor's room. One of our main points of discussion is the tension between student voice and institutional responsibility. I started to wonder: How do other prep school publications balance student voice with institutional responsibility, and how have their editorial decisions changed over time? I chose to look at this through the lens of three publications: NMH’s Lamplighter, Deerfield's Scroll, and Andover's Phillipian.
I started at NMH, in the archives, talking to Peter Weis. The story of NMH publications unfolded as a series of identity shifts. Weis told me one of the first student papers, The Hermonite, was founded in the spring of 1888. It was presented not as a school publication but as the voice of the campus's Republican club. “Given the Christian nature of the school,” said Weis, “ they weren't going to publish anything inflammatory.”
For decades, that cautious approach stayed true, but in 1967, editorial decisions began to reflect students’ political engagement. “You see clear politicizing of things,” said Weis. The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr made many of the Black students upset, exposing how different the schools' overwhelmingly white leadership was from their experience. The tension is visible in “The Push Is Now the Shove” by Thomas C. Harris, a beautifully written article that encouraged reflective conversation rather than outrage alone. The student movement led to numerous changes campus wide. The school hired more Black teachers, appointed Black students to leadership positions, and began integrating Black history into the curriculum.
In 1970, June Jordan, a black lesbian poet and Northfield alumna, wrote a piece for the New Times, NMH’s school magazine, reflecting on what Northfield education meant to her. Jordan took the school seriously, acknowledging its influence on her intellectual and personal growth while also naming its limitations. She wrote, “Nobody can give me freedom. I took my freedom. I am taking it. You can, too. Because of — and despite — Northfield, I am more free. They are not perfect, the Northfield and Mount Hermon schools. Nor am I. The schools put together a rather strong, profoundly affecting scene. And it was there that I discovered the bond between knowledge and power, the bond between independence and happiness. It was there that I learned that weakness, even weakness, is a matter of choice.” Her writing modeled what it looks like to honor a community while still holding it accountable.
In the fall of 1969, The Hermonite became the Bridge. Editors published a joke issue every year, but according to Weis, some stories crossed a line. “There were things that got published that really had no business being published.” One example came in 1989, when an article that was highly critical of the dining hall services was published without administrative review and had destabilizing effects on the community.
These tense moments shaped what NMH journalism is today. Each controversy forced the school to reconsider how much freedom student editors should have and how much responsibility the institution must take for what appears in print. Over time, this back and forth created the editorial culture that exists today. Editors are less bound by fixed rules and instead are constantly making judgment calls with the help of the faculty advisor. Weis’s perspective represents one side of that tension: “You need to let the better angels of students' nature be allowed to express themselves.”
Lamplighter Advisor Ben James explains that the publication aims “to publish stories that matter directly to NMH students,” particularly those that connect what’s happening on this campus to what's happening for teenagers nationally and globally.
This mission sometimes runs up against the pressure to protect student safety. James describes two kinds of stories that hit institutional limits. The first is privacy, whether medical, immigration, or anything that could expose minors to harm. “It's always a bummer,” said James, “when a student has a meaningful story idea, but the only way to pursue it would threaten someone's safety.” His role is to help them find another angle, or sometimes to accept that there isn't one.
The second category — politically charged stories that echo heated national conversation — is even trickier. Last spring, when headlines were focused on immigration crackdowns on college campuses, many NMH international students wanted to write about it. “For the first time, we felt we didn't understand how far the consequences could go,” James said. “It didn't seem worth it to put our students at risk.” The caution felt justified as backlash emerged at many schools that decided to speak out on these issues. “I still don’t know if we made the right decision,” James admitted.
When the Lampligher editors met in the fall to talk about potential topics, that uncertainty shaped the room. We hesitated around controversial topics, becoming more guarded. There was a shared feeling that this is what we do here: we shut people down. James doesn't question why students feel this way; instead, he points to how fear itself has become part of the editorial process.
Only a 15 minute drive away is NMH’s sibling school, Deerfield Academy. The Deerfield Scroll, like NMH's student publications, is school-funded, making the editorial staff more aware of potential backlash from their articles. The Scroll faculty advisor, Justin Romick, said the Scroll’s mission is to act as a snapshot of this time at Deerfield. “We want someone 20 years in the future to understand what the time was like, looking at what we put together.” The other mission is to educate kids about journalism, teach them to become better readers and writers, and help them understand their community. The third thing, Romick said, is to publish a really high-level, informative, and useful resource for the community.
One difficulty for Deerfield journalists has been learning to interview intimidating subjects such as deans, administrators, and faculty. To prepare students, the school runs workshops with the Deans that train reporters to ask difficult questions and navigate uncomfortable situations. Scroll journalists also learn that sometimes you can't get all the answers you are looking for. “You're just not entitled to everyone's response, ”said Romick. The places where the Scroll must be really careful, Romick noted, are those where the institution might be exposed to legal action.
The Scroll, as part of the institution, must consider its own liability. Despite these constraints, The Scroll preserves a strong culture of student driven journalism. “If there is something a student wants to write about, we let them write about it,” Romick said. “Nobody who gets into education did so because they wanted to quiet the voices of their students.” This is an ideal many educators believe in, but one that becomes complicated when students’ stories contradict school guidelines and safety protocols.
Unlike Lamplighter or The Scroll, Andover's campus feels completely different. Student life feels busier, louder, and more public, and its newspaper embodies that. As one of the only fully student run boarding school publications, The Phillipian operates with both editorial and financial independence. This structure is very unique among other boarding school publications. Its current Editor In Chief, Michael Kawooya ’26, said the publication is both “an independent paper and a community paper,” one that answers not to administrators, but to its student board and 150 year old archives. Advisors exist, but they don't read articles before publication or intervene in story decisions unless the EIC asks. Romick (of Deerfield) mentioned that Andover maintains its own endowments and legal protections. “If they publish something that is going to draw legal action, it's basically incumbent upon them. They have their own endowment. They have their own lawyers. They are separate.” The paper’s endowments cover both printing and legal support, meaning if legal threats arise, the liability falls on the Phillipian, not on Andover.
This independence has created many difficulties in the digital age. Alumni sometimes ask current editors to take down politically charged articles they wrote at age fifteen. “As a weekly paper, we're always moving towards the next thing,” Kawooya said, “but with sensitive topics we have to slow down and approach things with caution.”
Most of all, Kawooya sees the Phillipian as a way for students to speak to the adults who shape their school. Whether covering cell phone policy, dining services, or national politics, the goal is to “capture students' feelings, and have that be documented.” That responsibility is a lot of pressure for a high school student. “If I knew what I was getting myself into when I applied for Editor in Chief, I would have talked myself out of it. Kawooya said he has grown immensely .“You have to do something, even if it's outside your comfort zone. And then all of a sudden, you're outside of your comfort zone. And yet you have to do it because the paper has to go out, and your name is on the masthead.”
At NMH, Lamplighter operates with less freedom than earlier publications, but with stricter journalistic expectations. When comparing the past to current issues, Weis suggested, “if they want to write a story about drugs and alcohol at Northfield Mount Hermon. I'm fine with that. Just make it balanced.”
Editors at The Deerfield Scroll face the same balancing act. “Students want to write honestly,” Romick told me, “but we also have to think about safety, accuracy, and the well-being of the community. Writers discuss how far they can push a topic before it crosses into something the school might view as harmful. Sometimes this means a phrase gets changed, or in extreme cases, an article disappears.”
Student journalism lives in a gray area. Publications at NMH, Deerfield, and Andover take different forms. Still, they all struggle with the same questions: How much freedom can students have when institutions are responsible for their safety, reputation, and legal standing? Independence offers protection from school oversight but also puts an enormous amount of pressure and responsibility on students. Institutional support provides guidance but inevitably limits how far students' voices can go.
Across these schools, the tension in publications is a sign of engagement and not failure. Editors, advisors, and administrators are not trying to suppress student journalism; instead, they are negotiating what it means to publish honestly in an environment that prioritizes the protection of its students. A sentence written late at night can end up far beyond campus in the morning, causing potential scrutiny and institutional consequences. But students keep on writing anyway, doing what they can to get it right. Student journalism might never figure out the line between voice and responsibility, but it teaches young people how to speak honestly in systems that are built to be cautious.
