Boarding

When you arrive at Olney Friends School, it may be your first experience living in a dormitory and away from home. Olney has two dormitories, the Guindon and the Mott. While we do not have locks on our dorms, only the residents of those dorms and their Dorm Heads are allowed to enter.  Our Dorm Heads—assigned faculty members that live on campus— supervise students and a staff dorm sponsor sleeps in the dormitory each night.

Dorm leadership also falls to student dorm staff, which is usually comprised of four to six students who serve as liaisons between the student dorm community and the adult dorm staff. Each student dorm staff member has one weekly duty night, where he or she is responsible for checking room cleanliness during the day, and checking students into the dorm in the evening. It is a tradition for the student dorm staff to circulate around the dorm at lights out and wishes everyone a goodnight before the adults do a final evening round.

 Student dorm staff serve as role models and fill many roles; generally, they take their positions seriously. They may act as mediators when conflicts arise, help plan activities, and teach dorm traditions and procedures. They also plan weekend activities which may include telling ghost stories by a bonfire, playing whole school games like “Bring it Back Alive” or “Star Trek,” or movie nights and slumber parties in the dorm parlors. The weekend activities bring students together over shared interests and empower the students because they take ownership of the planning and implementation of the activity.