The State of Living at Milton: Is Everyone on Board?

By Andre Leung' ‘25

Milton prides itself on its century-old boarding program, which supports half its student community. As quoted from the Milton website, “the support and care that Milton students feel extends well beyond the classroom... to create a true home,” and that Milton is “a thriving, 24-hour campus with the resources students need for studies, support, and fun.” However, the difference in merely the number of residents—from Hathaway’s 29 residents to Wolcott’s 46 residents—and the age of the dorms—Forbes’s 131 years to Millet’s 20 years—makes for some inevitable discrepancies in experience.

As a resident of Goodwin, I don’t have many complaints about my dorm’s environment. Rooms here on east campus have practical layouts, scenic Centre Street views, and underappreciated wood floors. Chloe Li ‘25, a boarding monitor living in Hathaway, echoes my sentiment, expressing that “the overall living environment is really comfortable with lots of closet space” and that it is “definitely cleaner than the other dorms, as there are no rat issues at all.” However, the dining situation on east campus has left more to be desired, with her saying that she “hate[s] the food.” 

A veteran of Forbes, Zidan Graham ‘25 thinks that his boarding experience is “awesome” but that the conditions “should be improved.” Though “[he] understand[s] that facilities can’t be open 24/7,” he thinks that it is “not right” that he has to wait the “whole weekend for facilities to open if something goes wrong in the dorm.” Though he “understand[s] that Forbes is old” and “can’t do proper air-conditioning,” he thinks that there “must be a way to improve the heating” because, during the winter, his room can get so cold that he needs to wear “a coat and full sweats in [his] room just to stay warm.”

Safina Abramova ‘25, who lives in Hallowell, believes that while the boarding administration “definitely has the resources to improve living conditions” for the boarding community, it often doesn’t choose to do so until there is an “overwhelming amount of pressure from boarding students and their parents.” She emphasizes how “it took [her] roommate and [her] a week” to have facilities take care of a dead mouse in their room “despite [her] emailing the house head almost every day.” However, she notes that, after numerous complaints from students and parents, the administration has since made “very effective changes”: the carpets have now been professionally cleaned, and trash is regularly taken care of.

Hailing from west campus’s Millet, Adrienne Fung ‘25 is “quite happy overall with the central AC and an elevator, with the rooms themselves being generally quite nice,” though she notes that “the bathrooms are decent except for the first-floor bathroom, which has no windows and poor ventilation.” She also wishes that their “kitchen was bigger and that [they] had a few more washers and dryers.” 

Although each dorm has its own set of issues—broken stoves, freezing rooms, or dining complaints—one platform now unites us all: REACH. Reach Student Life Management, stylized as REACH, is an Australian company that has implemented its systems in boarding schools, such as Andover, Governor's, and Tabor, in addition to more than 500 schools globally. From check-ins to sign-outs, REACH, introduced this school year, has permeated every pen-and-paper aspect of Milton’s boarding life. In their words, REACH provides “a suite of ... advanced tools, which automate ... residential activities ... and provide measurable gains for efficiency and risk mitigation.” With the adoption of a highly praised system, it would be only reasonable to believe that this system came at an equally high cost to Milton.

Despite its appeal of helping digitalize existing infrastructure, REACH falls short of its promises. What used to be a sign-out process that took seconds now requires navigating through multiple screens, selecting leave types, entering detailed travel information, and confirming hosts. Students are tasked with inputting every leg of transportation, exact travel times, and verifying host details. This complexity is compounded by an unoptimized user interface, especially visible on the mobile app’s leave request page. Perhaps, given more time for boarders to adjust, REACH could simplify boarding life. Until then, the boarding community is left with an app that, much like our dorms, is functional but far from ideal.

Beyond the need for facility improvements, the key to bridging the gap in boarding conditions lies in optimizing everyday habits. The hardware problems across Milton’s dorms are frustrating but prove straightforward to remedy. Extending facility hours, tightening the insulation, or requesting a cleaning crew mostly concerns financial resources. 

While these issues may feel like first-world problems, the boarding program, just like the academic program, should ensure that it reciprocates the investment students and families have made in Milton. Only by addressing issues big and small—rooted in the hardware and the software—will we create a residential experience that everyone will be on board with.