Reading Tamar Lewin’s “For Colleges, Small Cuts Add Up to Big Savings” in the New York Times, I’m struck by how many potential areas of cost savings used to be part of boarding school communities and how easily boarding schools can reassert them by making them a priority- by setting aside time for them. Make something part of the schedule and you show that it’s important.

Hearteningly, most cuts have little to do with teaching and academic work.

Straight-up, some of the cost saving methods used by colleges aren’t applicable to boarding schools- hiring students for some campus jobs. And, in some cost saving areas, boarding schools might be ahead of college efforts- tray free dinging halls that reduce food consumption and energy and water conservation through reduced cleaning. We haven’t been on a boarding school campus this year that still uses trays. Many boarding Schools participate in the Green Cup Challenge already working to reduce energy and curb resource use.

Reducing bills by controlling consumption provides the easiest and most direct areas to cut bills:

Our favorite:  Many colleges are reducing their use of paper by putting admissions brochures, course catalogs and phone directories online instead of on paper.

“…Oberlin College in Ohio saved $22,300 by scaling back on window washing, and Pitzer College in Claremont, Calif., is power washing its sidewalks and windows once a year instead of twice. Carleton College in Northfield, Minn., is having office trash picked up weekly instead of daily, a change that eliminated three custodian jobs…

Colleges are also installing low-flow shower heads and energy-saving light bulbs and holding contests to see which dorm can most reduce its electricity costs…

At Susquehanna University in Selinsgrove, Pa., the contest resulted in almost $3,000 saved as students competed in turning off lights and unplugging chargers and printers. Students in participating dorms got 25 percent of the savings, $730, for pizza parties and other programs.

Davidson saved more than $10,000 by switching from bottled water to tap at most college events….Dickinson, for example, is saving $150,000 by cutting back on free laundry service for students and an additional $75,000 by eliminating free ESPN and HBO in student rooms.” (NYT)

Do we need cable television in every dorm common room? Cable television on one or two televisions in an all-school common area is probably enough. Heck, how about no cable TV?

After reading Lewin’s article my mind jumped to The Headmaster, John McPhee’s boarding school classic portrait of long-time Deerfield School head Frank Boyden and the shape that his work and thinking gave Deerfield. Finding and thumbing through my copy, I quickly found two situations in which Boyden is still relevant and was ahead of his time.

Boyden thought critically about printed catalogs even before the Internet. McPhee explains Boyden’s refusal to print a Deerfield catalog:

“Deerfield is probably the only prep school that has never published a catalog. ‘We offer all the courses required by any college or university,’ the headmaster explains. ‘A catalog is expensive. I’d rather give the money to a scholarship boy or two. I’ve never been able to write a catalog anyway. Those that have been prepared for me I could never live up to. They’re idealistic- a sales argument. I don’t think we need a sales argument. My successor will publish a catalog- I’m sure of that.’” (The Headmaster)

Describing a new student’s immersion into Deerfiled life McPhee writes:

“A new boy at Deerfield cannot have been there very long before the idea is impress upon him that he is a part of something that won’t work unless he does his share.” (The Headmaster)

The common good, work, and frugality were common sense for Boyden and we might be able to simplify and shed waste if we give our lenses a Boyden tint.

While boarding schools can’t directly employ students like The College of Wooster summer job program, the fact is, we (boarding schools) can all structure our days so that we can include small jobs that do two things- one, demonstrate our ties to each other through communal service and two, reduce costs. As a culture, we’ve become lazy and gotten away from practicing the little responsibilities- of which we’re all capable- that make our communities work- helping out.

We let “hire someone to it” become a way of life.

Lets reclaim helping and contribution through labor. We can find time in our days to take out trash, run the vacuum, sweep, clean, turn off the television, and, in New England, shovel snow.

This is where small schools- having never enjoyed big budgets and well practiced in living on communal labor and efforts- have much to teach their larger brethren. Simply put, small schools are used to living with their means and teaching students how to contribute to the community through work.

Beyond possible, it’s extraordinarily healthy to involve students and faculty in the small day-to-day labor that makes a school run. I’ve been lucky to have been part of such practical communal responsibility while I was dean of students at the Dublin School. At Dublin, each student had a daily job responsibility- cleaning or kitchen help that made the school run. Then, each Saturday morning, during Work Gang, the entire school spends the morning working on larger jobs- maintenance projects, deep cleaning, grounds keeping, or their community service work.

At Dublin we demonstrated to everyone, and anyone interested, that work and our connections to each other through work are paramount simply by creating scheduled time for our labor.

We understood that the answer to “Am I my brother’s keeper?” is “yes.”

Photo credit: James. C. C.