Dear Williston Northampton Community,

Thank you all for the feedback you’ve provided over the past several days. I am trying to respond by email to each person who has written a comment. Given the inclement weather today, I am afraid to say I’m falling a bit behind on my responses. As some of you may have seen, we are canceling Saturday classes and games and many of our day students are leaving campus this afternoon before the end of the academic day. We are working hard to stay on top of the updates as the weather changes and have been posting any new information on our Community Alerts page.

We are truly grateful for your input and for your willingness to take the time to write to us. The reason we posted this story was because we wanted feedback and we wanted to connect with you (no matter how painful that feedback can be for us to hear).

I wanted to clarify a couple of points, since the same questions seem to be appearing in the comments below. The first is that the seal is not going away. We will continue to use it on our official materials—including diplomas and legal documents. As you can see from the image in the article, the seal still has the tree, the full school name, the founding year, and an outline of Mount Tom—the same elements that it has had since it was first created. The only change we’ve made to the seal is to clarify some of the elements to make it easier to print and read (and to see when it’s reduced to a very small size). The new shield is just one more tool in our Williston Northampton toolbox.

As an alumnus noted in the comments, design by committee is never a good idea. That said, we collected as much input as we could from as many people as we could during this process. We posted the article because we wanted to share it. And, frankly, we’re proud of the work of the school and we’re excited about the future of Williston Northampton.

We feel fortunate that so many alumni care so deeply about the school and feel connected to the community online. We’re grateful you pay attention. And we’d like to hear from you more often about other aspects of the school and the broader Williston Northampton community. Please make sure we have your accurate contact information so we can get in touch with you about any future efforts that we undertake by taking a moment to update your information online (or send us an email at info@williston.com if you need your log in information).

Thank you again. Please stay safe and warm if you are in an area that’s being affected by Nemo today. We hope to be in touch with you again soon.

Best,

Traci Wolfe
Director of Communications