A surprise met this year’s and last year’s Chapel house residents as they returned to campus this fall: the belongings that they had stored in the house over the summer had disappeared.
Each year, before summer break began, former Chapel House adviser Mr. Craig Johnson would allow departing and incoming Chapel House residents to store their belongings in the dorm’s basement. Students picked up their belongings at the beginning of the following academic year. According to students, Mr. Johnson did this as a friendly gesture, to save students the costs of storing their boxes with Boomerang Storage, the company Choate contracts to store student belongings over the summer.
But over the summer, Mr. Johnson moved into a house off campus, and Ms. Janet De Leon, a new member of the English Department, took up his former position in Chapel House. When workers from ABM, Choate’s cleaning service, entered Chapel House to get it ready for another school year, they assumed that the boxes in the basement contained items that Mr. Johnson didn’t want, and they discarded them.
The students, upon discovering that their belongings had disappeared, asked the School about the whereabouts of their items and how they would be compensated for what they lost. On September 11, seven days after the school year began, affected students received an apology via email from sixth-form dean Ms. Julia Brown ’83, explaining that, in light of Mr. Johnson’s departure from campus, ABM had thrown the boxes away. In the same email, Ms Brown said that an inquiry had been made about what potential funds could be used to reimburse students.
In a follow-up email sent on September 27, Ms. Brown informed the students that if they lost a fan or a lamp they could go to Carrington House to pick up second-hand lamps and fans left over from Summer Programs.
Some two weeks later, on October 11, Ms. Gail Kaczmarek, the sixth-form deans’ assistant sent an email that said, “The School has provided $50 gift cards to those who lost items in Chapel over the summer. I have the gift cards in my office, please stop by to pick yours up.” Three current Chapel House residents who stored boxes in the dorm’s basement over the summer, Ahmed Wise ’20, Samuel Maldonado ’20, and Mark Ma ’20, said that they did not receive an email informing them of this compensation.
Mr. Johnson declined to comment for this article. Mr. Will Morris, Director of Residential Life, also declined to comment when asked about the School’s process of determining how students would be compensated.
After returning to campus, many students didn’t have all of the items they needed to live away from home. Naomi Koo ’20, who lived in Chapel last year, said, “I had to buy many basic items such as bedsheets, pillows, and hair dryers, which added up to probably around $1,000.”
Esi Dunyoh ’20, another resident of Chapel last year, lost all of her possessions except two boxes of clothing and one box of items that included pictures and toiletries. “I think it’s a pretty generous approximation for me to say that I lost around $2,000 worth of items,” said Dunyoh. “At the start of school, my mom and I went shopping and spent around $600, but that barely covered half of the clothes I lost.”
According to Choate’s Student Handbook, “At the end of each academic year, third, fourth, and fifth form students may pack and store on campus any items they do not wish to bring home for the summer…The School contracts with an outside company, which provides this service for a fee.”
Mr. Morris said that the School used to allow students to store items over the summer, although that practice was ended a few years ago, after some students returned to campus to find that their containers, and the items inside, had been damaged.
Some students who lost belongings from Chapel House this year were disappointed with the School’s response to the incident.
“It was definitely a tough process recovering from the losses,” Dunyoh said. “I lost a lot of textbooks and it was really inconvenient at the start of the school year to be missing essentials and most of my clothes. The School failed to provide a gift card until two weeks into the school year, which did not help with the transition into senior year.”
“Although I understand that it was Opening Days and everyone was busy, it took so long for us to know that our stuff was gone for good, and then I had to buy them all again after a month,” Koo said. “I can only make up for perhaps one or two items out of all the things I’ve lost with that gift card.”
Ahmed Wise ’20, a current resident of Chapel, said, “It was kind of a setback at the start of the school year as it interrupted the rhythm of getting back on campus. I feel that a $50 gift card is just a form of pity from the School rather than an actual effort to make up for student losses.”
Most students did agree that ultimately no one is to blame for the incident, and were, in fact, grateful to Mr. Johnson for his efforts to help them last spring. Some students said that they thought that they should have taken their items home or used Boomerang’s service.
“I would look at it as more of a communication error,” said Dunyoh. “We were not supposed to be storing our items in the basement of the Chapel even though people had previously done so. And ABM obviously didn’t know that the items were supposed to be kept there throughout the summer.”
Mr. Morris advised students for whom using Boomerang’s service is a financial burden to contact the Director of Student Activities, Ms. Alex Long, to identify potential — and School-sanctioned — solutions.
