Rivalries & rituals / November 2025 · School rivalries
Your rival wants to share the newspaper
Two rival papers managed a shared issue. The pep rally still needed a breakable door.
Deerfield editor John Qi Liu remembers a train ride with aching feet and no seat when a message arrived. A former editor knew someone at Choate who wanted their newspapers to share an issue. Liu’s first reaction was no. He replied that they would see, then put the thought away.
It is a lot to be asked about your school rival when you would rather sit down. A maybe, under those conditions, is practically magnanimous. It does not commit you. It does not, if you will forgive me, slam a door.
During that summer, Choate editor Reinah Lee worked at Deerfield, feeling, she later wrote, rather like a spy. She befriended a former Scroll editor and enjoyed reading the paper. One imagines the dismay of discovering that your rival publishes things you would have been pleased to run yourself.
By November 2025, they had a joint issue. Both mastheads appeared on the page. The rivalry, meanwhile, was about to express itself with props.
The night before Deerfield Day, Choate held its pep rally. The highlight, as one student told the school paper, was a reenactment: the boar mascot smashing through a green Deerfield door. The door was a prop. I feel this is worth establishing before anyone writes a letter. The next morning, organized buses brought Choate's fans to Deerfield, where they arrived to cowbells and cheering — blue and gold on the green campus, a number of them in boar onesies.
I like to think the prop was satisfied. It had a short, noisy career and an audience that never once asked it to be gracious.