1791 | January 2017

While perseverating over the inevitable complexity of my January calendar a few weeks ago, I found myself multitasking by opening my paper mail as well. I came upon a particularly sterile looking envelope with a return address from Alfred, ME. After ten years as a resident in the State of Maine, my number had come up for jury duty. My heart sank, realizing the date was during the week of the upcoming January board meeting. What if I got stuck on a trial? It also happened to be the date that I was scheduled to be in Waterville to meet with the president of Colby College. I turned immediately to the “excuses” section of the mailing, recalling my success fifteen years ago in New York talking my way out of a courtroom. Undoubtedly I could pull it off once again.

Fairly quickly, a few feelings of shame started creeping in. I actually remember my last time at jury duty that a judge in New York said something to me like: “You are a smart guy and would be an excellent addition to any jury. Are you really going to try to make it impossible to use you for such an important role?” Next I looked at my calendar and realized the inevitable – there were no better days. Kicking this one down the road a few weeks would not improve things anyway. I started emailing Colleen to reschedule a few things and clear the decks. I was headed to jury duty after all.

Once I had come to terms with this logistical reality, I actually was brought back to the emotional realm of three books I have read in the past few years regarding juries. The first was Kafka’s The Trial, which impacted me most deeply in its unsettling depiction of a protagonist who spends an entire novel trying to understand what he has been accused of while working his way through a bureaucratic nightmare that seemingly has no end. When the authorities ultimately put him to death, he actually seems resigned that he must be guilty, even though he never was able to understand his crime. The haunting opacity of the experience has stuck with me more than most novels. The second was Byron Stevenson’s more recent Just Mercy, which is such a compelling portrayal of our country’s mass incarceration problem as he depicts his struggles defending candidates on death row in Alabama. The class and race dynamics are devastating in this conversation, and it is shocking to see how so many victims are inches away from governmental execution having been falsely accused. Currently, I am finishing up Leo Tolstoy’s less known work Resurrection, which so far seems to be the tale of a government official who goes through a personal epiphany after serving as a jury member on a murder trial himself. In the wake of this trial that involves a false conviction, he undergoes a personal and spiritual awakening about the unfair socio-economic barriers in the trial system. This catalyzes an entire revelation to how he lives his life and his relationship with God.

While I am sure my trip to Alfred will likely not be quite so transformative, I suspect it will be moving in its unquestioned realness. It is impossible not to head into such an experience without some reflection on one’s civic duty or the state of our institutions and systems in general. Much like we ask our juniors and seniors to thoughtfully participate in major disciplinary outcomes for the Honor Committees at Berwick, I would hope I might expect a thoughtful and reasoned process and jury were I to be falsely accused of a crime. I suspect I have previously been quick to avoid taking on jury duty, because I have seen such little chance of that happening to me given my relative privilege within our society.

Jury duty, like maternity leaves, are pretty challenging for schools to manage. Many people are impacted when our employees are called away for extended periods of time. And yet if we expect to be a force for education and positive change in the Seacoast, it strikes me as pretty important to try and do our part in this critical American system. On a personal level, I am a little nervous about the whole thing. I am quite sure I will not be able to enter a courtroom or trial without some personal sense of anxiety or worry. The setting is intense and there is a great deal on the line. I would be curious to see how a jury deliberates and the outcome, given that I expect we would all come from varied backgrounds and life experiences. As someone who makes his living leading others and managing challenging meetings, I hope that I might find a way to avoid assuming that role while also having the conviction to express what I think is right. I will be curious to see, as a trial wears on, whether the collective emphasis will be getting to the right outcome or getting jury members back to work.

Who knows? Perhaps I will discover that my overly reflective services will not be needed. Maybe the case will settle before it gets to me. Either way, the experience of being called has changed me – forcing me to look a bit more closely at my instinctual feelings and reactions while coming to terms with some of aspects of my own hypocrisy.
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Berwick Academy

Berwick Academy, situated on an 80-acre campus just over one hour north of Boston, serves 550 students, Pre-Kindergarten through Grade 12 and Post-Graduates. Berwick students are from Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and several countries. Deeply committed to its mission of promoting virtue and useful knowledge, Berwick Academy empowers students to be creative and bold. Berwick strives to graduate alumni who shape their own learning, take risks, ask thoughtful questions, and come to understand and celebrate their authentic selves.