Our New Name

The decision to change our school’s name marks the culmination of a process stretching back many years. Although we could not have foreseen it, this change takes place at an extraordinary moment in our world. A vastly different world has presented itself in the last six months—one reshaped by a global pandemic and one coming to grips with the history of race in America. And while these challenges were not in focus a little over 12 months ago when we fully turned our attention towards the consideration of a new name for our school, it is unanticipated challenges such as these that modeled Frederick Gunn’s resiliency and willingness to stand up for the rights of all people. The decision to change our name is simply following the courage of our convictions; just what we believe Frederick Gunn would ask us to do.

Our decision was guided by a desire to honor our founder and clarify our vision, and is the next step in bringing our reputation up to the very high level of education and experience that we provide. With this announcement, we are revitalizing our school and recommitting ourselves to the ideals that he lived 170 years ago because they remain inspiring today.

In many ways, our school has the most interesting and cool founder of any boarding school in America. He has a great story and his ideals are more relevant today than ever before. He was a rugged outdoorsman, courageous abolitionist, and a leader in the Underground Railroad. He was a pioneering educator who affected everything and everyone around him. He inspired movements in America and instilled his principles and values in his students: male and female, black, white and Asian.

For many years the school was known as "Mr. Gunn's School," although we know that Mr. Gunn referred to it in his correspondence as early as 1871 as "The Gunnery." The name was coined by his students and later officially adopted as an expression of universal fondness for our founder. Although well-intentioned, its ambiguity ultimately obscured his vision and ideals.

In the spirit of Mr. Gunn, our students will become recognizable forces for good in the world—not left-right, liberal-conservative—but instead positive, forward-thinking, motivated individuals dedicated to learning from vastly different viewpoints. Most of all, our students will be Active Citizens—active in changing the world in the same entrepreneurial way that Frederick Gunn changed the world so many years ago.

Frederick Gunn's legacy is a story of action, of making a difference in the lives of others and in the world around him. For many schools, the idea of character education begins and ends with being a good person. While we wholeheartedly acknowledge the value of being good, we know character is expressed by more than just that. We believe in the importance of doing good, of looking out beyond yourself and making a change for the better in the world you live in. This is a lifelong journey, but we aim to lay the foundation here by encouraging students to think for themselves, to express their beliefs confidently and persuasively, and to stand up both for themselves and for others. That is what it means to be a force for good.

Yes. Members of the administration consulted with a small group of alumni representing multiple decades of association with our school. The group was necessarily small—ultimately approaching about 20 individuals—in order to maintain a level of confidentiality.

Yes, the decision was unanimously approved at the January 2020 board meeting.

We will continue to rebuild our campus—a process that, since 2000, has included: new girls and boys dorms, new natural and turf athletic fields, a new dining hall, a new College Counseling Center, renovated space for the Center for Academic Excellence, a new fitness center in EPAC, and most recently the $22 million Thomas S. Perakos Arts and Community Center that opened in January 2020. These campus investments give our students and faculty the facilities required and expected for boarding school life and increasingly make our school a destination hub for community and culture-making in Litchfield County. 

The existing Science and Math Building will be expanded and renovated into a Science, Math and Technology Center. This investment will allow for an environmentally sustainable, dynamic and beautiful place of teaching and learning at the heart of our campus. We will relocate the Health Center to a more central location on campus and create a Center for Health and Wellness that not only provides daily medical maintenance and care but, additionally, incorporates opportunity and space for holistic self-care. We will build new dorms to replace student spaces in Memorial and Emerson that model our commitment to the residential experience and community-building. Once we’ve accomplished this, we will have completed the goal of bringing all academic, residential, and community spaces to the side of campus south of Green Hill Road. We will build a state-of-the-art Athletic Center that appeals to every student and student-athlete at our school. All of this will be done with a commitment to integrate renewable energy sources and sustainable systems into every element of campus and operations going forward.

We will create modern programs that attract students and faculty while standing out against the independent school landscape. Our Outdoor Program will become a cornerstone of The Frederick Gunn School experience. Students will connect to the outdoors in personally challenging and exciting ways in order to graduate. We will continue to build on our Innovation Track allowing students to explore robotics and engineering and technology as a first step toward pursuing these passions in college and beyond. The Center for Citizenship and Just Democracy launches this year, funded by the E.E. Ford Foundation and matched by school donors. Our community already cheers character, courage and risk-taking and we will more formally give our students opportunities through this center to practice what it means to change the worlds around them.

We will be making an investment in our faculty and staff that will be unprecedented for our school. This will include significant and enduring improvements to holistic compensation, professional growth, and housing so that we can retain, develop, and attract the best faculty in any boarding school. Our faculty are the heirs and stewards of Mr. Gunn’s vision and our ability to invest in them needs to match that.

Over the next several years, we will build our current Entrepreneurship courses into a Center for Entrepreneurship that helps our students connect to the innovation economy and start learning about changing the business and civic world through creative and pragmatic entrepreneurship.

We are fully committed in our core and our history to diversity, equity and inclusion. We will continue to lay the groundwork for a fully integrated commitment to developing a diverse, and inclusive campus, where these commitments are integrated into everything we do. We will be the inclusive, caring community that Frederick and Abigail Gunn always envisioned and to which they committed their lives.

We are proud of our history and will always celebrate The Gunnery. We are changing the name, but our history, our principles, and our mission will always guide us. Over time, we will dedicate a space on campus to celebrate all that The Gunnery name stands for in a meaningful and proud fashion. Though we will not be selling Gunnery apparel beyond September 30, 2020, we hope alumni will continue to wear it proudly! We hope you will revisit your school, reconnect, and to glimpse the future. For those of you not able to visit campus soon, we invite you to check out our Virtual Visit on the Admissions page of our website.

No, our motto remains the same, be it in English or in Latin. We have made a compelling decision to present the motto in English on our crest, so that more members of our community would regularly contemplate its meaning. We are proud of our motto and how it is meaningfully and purposefully translated into the student experience through our programs and curriculum.

Yes, and we will be working hard to more actively promote our mascot and athletic branding.

Red and gray remain core colors for our school. We have expanded our color palette to include navy in order to more boldly represent our school’s brand.

The Frederick Gunn School diplomas can be requested by contacting Jess Baker at bakerj@frederickgunn.org.

Yes, Gunnery gear will be available from the school store until September 30, 2020.

Girls were enrolled in Mr. Gunn’s school and went on school camping trips, which is documented through primary written and photographic sources in the Paula and George Krimsky Archives and Special Collections.

As early as 1847, Mr. Gunn chose to welcome the children of an African American family into his school in Towanda, Pennsylvania, despite the fact that to do so meant risking his future prospects and dreams:

I teach all who come to receive my instructions, and who con­duct themselves in such a manner as to promote the ends of the institution; that I never can or will give way to this inhuman and infernal prejudice, — no, not for one hour! If I am compelled to relinquish my situation here because I cannot sell myself to the skin-aristocrats to help them in heaping contempt upon those whom God loves as well as he does you and me, — why, then so be it, so be it! (MOG,  p. 165)

Mr. Gunn resisted many of the norms and commonly held assumptions of his particular time and place in order to welcome students that society, and many educators, believed required separate institutions. 

We used the more general term “Asians” in the context of a brief statement in the video to point to the fact that, in 1872, Mr. Gunn welcomed two boys to The Gunnery, Lok Wing Chuan and Tsai Cum Chiong, from the Canton region as part of the Qing Dynasty’s Chinese Educational Mission. The boys remained at the school for approximately seven years before heading to college. It was not possible to provide the full context of this early example of international students at the school in the video, but it speaks to the nature of the community Mr. Gunn pursued. A fuller version of this part of the school’s history is available through the 2004 Gunn Scholar project on file in The Paula and George Krimsky Archives.

The best primary source for information about Mr. Gunn is the biography written by a group of alumni shortly after his death entitled The Master of The Gunnery. We are committed to making a hard copy reprint and audio version of this available relatively soon. In the meantime, you can access a PDF version of the book here. Additional information about Mr. Gunn is available through The Paula and George Krimsky Archives.