Communication Office
The communication office develops, implements, and evaluates communication plans and programs that support the mission of the School. The office facilitates Milton Academy’s efforts to promote awareness and good will among its various constituencies and external public; to recruit students and faculty; and to raise financial and volunteer support.
Communication Staff
Sarah Abrams
Editor, Milton Magazine
sarah_abrams@milton.edu
Marisa Donelan
Associate Director of Communication
marisa_donelan@milton.edu
Eileen Newman
Chief Communication Officer
eileen_newman@milton.edu
Esten Perez
Director of Communication and Media Relations
esten_perez@milton.edu
Emily Sedgwick
Social Media Manager / Video Content Producer
Emily_Sedgwick@milton.edu
Greg White
Director, Web Development and Academy Graphic Design
gregory_white@milton.edu
Media Contact
If you are a member of the media in need of information or press materials, please contact Esten Perez at 617-898-2395 or esten_perez@milton.edu
Campus News
Speech and Debate Team Shines Online
It’s been an unusual but successful year so far for the Speech and Debate Team. They kicked off 2021 competing at the Massachusetts Speech and Debate League’s Happy New Year Tournament, earning several first-place honors in all three divisions of debate as well as numerous speech categories. With all the tournaments held online, students have had to adapt and shift their approach leading to both opportunities and challenges.
Jack Burton’s ’22 primary event is Humorous Interpretation (HI), but he also competes in Duo Interpretation and Dramatic Interpretation. He says the virtual format, especially for interpretive pieces, changes the way the competitor interacts with the audience.
“Bridging a connection with your audience is an essential part of speech,” says Burton. “Without the ability to make eye contact with and elicit live laughter from judges and competitors in the room, speech pieces definitely lose a sense of magic, and it is harder for us performers to engage the audience.”
But Burton, who earned third place at the Yale Invitational, second place at the Duke Invitational, and first place at the Princeton Invitational, says competing online also offers an opportunity to get creative with the camera.
Dr. Brenna Wynn Greer is MLK Jr. Day Speaker
Historian Brenna Wynn Greer spoke about “the perils of symbolic Blackness” and how popular Civil Rights history focuses simplistically on the nonviolent version of Martin Luther King, Jr., rather than the complexities of who he was as a person and an activist. Greer, an associate professor of history at Wellesley College, was this year’s MLK Jr. Day speaker.
Greer said the symbolic King is seen as a kind and gentle Black activist and that, “as a nation, we remain heavily invested in this symbolic King. This is a problem because symbolic King encourages simple and sanitized histories of the Black freedom struggle.”
During the few years before he was assassinated, “King’s criticism of capitalism and his opposition to the Vietnam War made him unpopular not only among U.S. officials but also among Civil Rights activists. This King was a troublemaker, so he was sidelined increasingly as an activist and he was pushed into the shadows as a historical figure,” said Greer.
Personal Stories Bridge Distance in Project Story
Our stories connect us and make us unique, students performing Walk Through This World demonstrated this week. Telling the personal stories of Milton community members, the Project Story performers made connections among the School’s students, faculty, and staff.
Storytelling is especially important right now as people remain distant during the COVID-19 pandemic, said English faculty member Hannah Pulit ’07, who with Performing Arts faculty member Peter Parisi teaches the Project Story: Narrative Journalism and Performance course.
“At a time when many of us are feeling isolated and disconnected, we particularly appreciate the affirmation that stories matter, that they remind us of our shared humanity, and that, though we may feel lonely in our struggles, we are never truly alone,” Pulit said to close the performance.
Expanded Opportunities for Senior Projects
Senior projects are a Milton tradition providing graduating Class I students with an opportunity to take a deep dive into a topic that interests them, whether they’re serving the community, exploring a favorite class subject further, learning a new skill, shadowing a professional, or creating art.
Planning for the project period—the month of May through the first days of June—has encountered some obstacles during the COVID-19 pandemic, however, leading to an expansion of project offerings, said Academic Dean Heather Sugrue.
“We wanted to provide some more options and build something that would assume our current pandemic restrictions remain in place,” she said. “So that means that we can’t plan for students having internships or working off-campus. We needed to give some more options.”
The new offerings this year include the choice of more than a dozen seminars coordinated by adults in the Milton community. Topics include creative writing, animation, designing educational games, the historical archeology of Milton, justice and law in the movies, geology, cooking, Latin epigraphy, prize fiction of 2020, race and the war on drugs, military history, the future of schools, and more.
UnTextbooked: A History Podcast for the Future
Three Milton students, Jana Amin ’21, Will Bourell ’23, and Elliot Smith ’22, joined 12 of their peers across the country in creating and producing UnTextbooked, a podcast exploring the real effects of history now and in the future.
“We created UnTextbooked to help address the incomplete narrative found in many history textbooks and to find answers to big questions,” Smith said. “Each of the 15 episodes features one teen podcaster, one book, and one famous historian.”
Smith’s episode, “How a Black teenager and his young lawyer changed the criminal justice system,” features an interview with the historian Matthew Van Meter, author of Deep Delta Justice: A Black Teen, His Lawyer, and Their Groundbreaking Battle for Civil Rights in the South. Van Meter’s book chronicles the wrongful 1966 arrest of Gary Duncan in Plaquemines, Louisiana and the era’s Civil Rights battles; Duncan’s case, argued by attorney Richard Sobol, reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that states must honor requests for jury trials by defendants in criminal cases.
