DEIJ Board Returns to Dorms With a New Approach
By Leo Wan ’28 & Lucas Xia ’28
On March 31, 2026, the DEIJ Student Board completed its second round of dorm house visits, this time centered around the activity “Timeless Fits.” The visits came after this winter’s turbulent first round of talks, which asked students to respond to statements about gender norms on an agree-to-disagree spectrum and then compared their responses to the DEIJ’s “correct answers.” The prior format drew criticism, resulting in a guest opinion piece in The Milton Paper calling the presentations ineffective, as well as a response from six members of the student board. This time, the DEIJ took a deliberately different approach.
The session opened with a slideshow featuring outfits from different historical periods and cultures, including Japanese royal court dress and a recent Saint Laurent runway look. Students were then asked to rate each outfit on a scale from “completely feminine” to “completely masculine” before the historical context behind each was revealed. Dorms then broke into smaller groups to discuss topics such as who shapes their fashion choices and who determines what counts as “men’s” or “women’s” clothing.
“The idea was to use fashion as a fun way into a bigger conversation about gender,” explained Mrs. Abhar-Persson, the International Student Director. “We also wanted students to think about where their own style comes from, whether that is family, Instagram, or people they look up to, and who has the power to set those norms in the first place.” Gustavo dos Reis ’26, a DEIJ board member who facilitated the Wolcott House session, clarified the overall purpose: “Our biggest goal was having the dorm be comfortable with discussing some ideas and keeping in mind that disagreement can happen in a healthy way,” he clarified.
Across dorms, students described the program as engaging and far more memorable than the first round. Kyle Schaefer ’28 called the second visit “very educational,” taking away the idea that “there is not really specific wear for men or women; people can wear whatever they want.” Wesley Xue ’28 maintained that the discussion-based second visit left a stronger impression than the previous visit: “Last year, I forgot everything as soon as the meeting ended…but this year, I still remember a lot, even though it happened quite a while ago.” Tobias Kim ’27 really enjoyed the smooth transition from the fun slideshow to deeper topics, which “led Norris to be more well-involved” and made the second visit “more engaging and more chill.”
Part of what made the conversations stick was how personally they landed. Xue reflected that his parents chose his clothes growing up and that coming to Milton marked the first time he had real agency over what he wore. Mia Xu ’28 described growing up with strict uniform policies that left her little room to develop her own sense of style. Similarly, Dasha Johnson ’27 noted that her previous school did not allow girls to wear pants until seventh grade. These personal experiences, which surfaced organically, allowed students to feel more closely connected with the conversations than abstract axioms from the department would.
Similarly, Xue explained that the first round of DEIJ dorm visits was far less compelling because “there were very specific questions about the gender spectrum, which were, although important to discuss, less common in terms of knowledge, and hence less relatable.” Additionally, Xue suggested that the first visit made it “too clear” that the DEIJ Board was steering students towards “a single point,” whereas during the second visit, Xue “felt there was more freedom to discuss instead of a correct answer for every question.”
On the other hand, Ryan Xu ’29 questioned whether the notion that there is no right or wrong answer is fully acceptable. He illustrated his point with a debate in music: the majority of people would agree, he argued, that “Kendrick Lamar makes better music than troll artists.” In his analogy, the same idea, that subjectivity has certain limits, might be true of certain aspects of gender norms.
While the overall response was positive, it was not without caveats. Xu appreciated the new format but felt that “the DEIJ talks about the most obvious things and does not probe deeper into more controversial ones,” adding that more surprising outfit pairings could achieve DEIJ’s purpose better, and “have it prove a point.” Johnson also expressed concern that “if the DEIJ is trying to have people talk about it, then they should have everyone in the community, including day students,” proposing bringing these conversations into Monday morning Stables Meetings. Althea Spieler Nowara ’29 added that while she was open to more visits in the future, she would prefer to “keep them interactive…and not just having them lecture us.”
Ultimately, Abhar-Persson found the difference in engagement between the two visits as “night and day,” and dos Reis explained that this disparity “is all about linear growth. People just get better at having conversations with each other as time goes by.”