Every year, in the last all-school gathering before graduation, the entirety of the Choate community comes together to celebrate outstanding students. This is Prize Day, an event that traditionally centers, however subtly, on a binary system based on gender. The School Seal Prize, for example, has long been won by at least one female student and one male student who “has made an outstanding contribution to the School during his [or her] sixth form year.”
Although prizes will continue to be given out, the Choate administration recently decided to remove gender distinctions. The change, one part of a larger effort by the school to increase its awareness of gender issues, will affect this year’s Prize Day on May 26.
Ms. Katie Levesque, the Dean of Faculty, was one of the leaders of the change. “We have taken any of the prizes that were distinct by boys and girls and have merged them,” she explained. “In some cases, where the citations were a little different, we have retained both prizes, and both are open to students regardless of gender identity.”
The degendering of the prizes originated from a school-wide concern that the awards excluded students who did not identify on the gender binary scale. “The reality is, and as many of our community members have learned as we are increasing our education on this topic, we have students on our campus right now, and I expect we will have more in the future, who do not identify on the binary as male or female,” added Ms. Levesque. The changes are part of a movement throughout many schools and campuses to move toward a broader, more inclusive understanding of gender.
Choate has a particularly complex history of gender and prizes. The school’s prize system is the product of two separate institutions: the all-boys Choate School and all-girls Rosemary Hall. “The biggest reasons why our prizes were the way they were was because of the history of the Choate School and Rosemary Hall, being a boys’ school and a girls’ school,” Ms. Levesque said. “When the two schools merged, we kept the two different prizes. Part of the system we are seeing differently because the world has changed.”
The Choate Administration started to look at its gender policies around two years ago, and most changes have involved not only the senior officers but also faculty, students, and alumni. “Issues of gender and gender-expansive policies have been something we have been working on at this school for a couple of years, including some of the changes you’ve seen this year around bathroom stalls,” explained Ms. Levesque. “We had a committee look at prizes last year who did great work and made some recommendations about examining gender and prizes. We have also had a gender committee working last year, and they continue their work looking at our policies around gender across campus.”
Ms. Levesque continued, “Ultimately, the decision to move away from gender in prizes came from the senior officers of the school. We have had conversations as faculty. The faculty did vote on and approve the specific changes that we made to the prize citations.”
For third formers, the general excellence prize and the earnest and persistent effort prize are now open to all genders, as are the general excellence prize and enthusiasm prize for fourth and fifth formers. The James A. Spencer departmental science award, previously for one girl and one boy in the fifth form, will also move away from gender. Seven prizes are now open to all sixth form students: the School Seal prize; the William Gardner and Mary Atwater Choate Award; the Rassweiler Award; the Owen Morgan Prize; the Flora B. Macdonald Bonney Prize; the David T. Layman Prize; and the Classes of 1976 and 1980 Leadership Award.
The debate among the faculty highlighted the challenges of removing gender from prizes. “There were very relevant questions around how this would work logistically and what it means for the number of students that we are honoring,” Ms. Levesque said. “If you have a prize for a boy and a girl in the same form, then you are going to have at least two winners, as well as honorable mentions. With a combined prize, there is now only just one prize. And, most likely, fewer overall students will be honored.” She went on, “I think that our faculty wants us to be able to honor all of the wonderful students that we have. One of the interesting layers of removing gender is that in some cases, there are now fewer prizes. It may be that we end up giving more winners and having co-winners more often.”
There have also been various discussions among alumni, some of whom help endow awards. “For some of our alumni base, some of these prizes are rooted in history for them,” explained Ms. Levesque. “We honor our history in so many ways, and I think that it is really important that we are not going to remove any of the prize names.”
Despite these concerns, Ms. Levesque said, “It felt morally unacceptable for the school that we would have a prize that either forced a student who does not identify as male or female into one of those categories, or have a student not be eligible to win that prize.” She concluded, “I am excited that we, as a school, can be responsive to our students and to our world as things change.”
