Prefects lead in Sustainability Efforts
Many
boarding schools give students the opportunity to forward sustainability
measures in their respective communities.
Deerfield Academy and Phillips Exeter call these students Environmental
Proctors. Choate has
C-Proctors. Northfield Mount
Hermon has Ecoleaders. At
Berkshire, we give the responsibility to our most important student leaders:
the prefects. In order to measure how
well our prefects are forwarding sustainability in their dorms, the
sustainability class came up with a rubric to evaluate their performance. 
The rubric includes energy use, recycling, communication, and
conservation behaviors. For
example, head dorm parents provide us with input regarding how well the
prefects raise sustainability awareness.
We also look for the percentage decrease of electricity and oil use
compared to previous years. We
even look at the level of cleanliness of recycling bins and the actual volume
of material being recycled.
The
sustainability class used the rubric to evaluate prefect performance in the
months before March break. After
tabulating the results, MacMillan prefects Breana Wilson '11 and Juna Lee '11 earned
the highest score of 3.5 out of 5.0 points. “As prefects of MacMillan dorm, Juna
and I thought it was our responsibility to implement
the basics of being sustainable to our fellow students,” said Wilson. Alex Arjoon '11, the creator of the unique
grading system, congratulated all the prefects and added, “I made this system
so it would encourage students to be more sustainable, but at the same time
teach them the importance of their responsibility to the environment and
community.”
In the end,
we hope that the prefect’s efforts in forwarding sustainability will leave a
lasting impression on student behavior, encouraging them to lower their
environmental impact.
-- Hank Hoover '12
and all-boys prep school outside of Boston, for a 1-day mini-symposium on Student Biomedical Research. The goal was to foster collaboration, communication and community outreach with our students. AMSR students Liza Bernstein '13, Sissi Wang '13, Lars Robinson '13, Elsie Guevara '13, Ernest Yue '13, and Nate MacKenzie '14, gave short talks about their work in the new Bellas/Dixon Math and Science lecture hall. The talks were followed up by break-out sessions where Belmont Hill students described their research projects and students discussed commonalities between the projects and future goals.
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