The senior deck at the Upper School is not just some cool hangout. For many seniors at RE, it’s the heart of the school, where students make memories and friendships stick.  

“The deck is the place to be,” said Jacob Katz ’24, a senior deck regular. “I spend tons of time there either hanging out with friends or running the ping-pong table for the entire advisory period. Eating there when I don’t go off campus is nice because it allows everyone to be in one spot and sort of unites our grade in the way that everyone can be involved in conversation.” 

But how long has the senior deck been this Mount Olympus for Ransom Everglades students? The answer is: not that long. According to Mrs. Katrina Patchett and Ms. Kelley Frumer from the RE Archives, the senior deck is a relatively recent tradition, and it was preceded by multiple senior hangout spots in different places around campus.   

RE seniors have probably always found places to congregate, but the first mention of anything like the senior deck appears in the 1996 yearbook, which mentions the “senior benches” that surrounded the massive mango tree outside of Ludington Hall. These benches, like the cannon, were frequently decorated with paint and stickers, and they were known for housing napping seniors during college application season.  

The structure that is now the senior deck was present on campus, but it was attached to a black box theatre where the school would present arts productions inside what is now the science lab. The black box theatre was then phased out, paving the way for the introduction of the lab that now houses dozens of fish species and environmental science classes taught by Mr. Scott Erdmann and Dr. Kristine Stump. Even after the lab was created, the deck was still “just a deck,” with tables and chairs available to any student.  

Why didn’t the seniors claim it? The answer is: for a while, they had another space to call home. The 2001 yearbook shows a new senior space that was created in the early 2000s, which was just in front of the deck. The archivists found that this space was lined with benches around a “triangle of vegetation” in memorial of an alumni who had passed away in the previous years. That space was adopted and became the new senior place to be, phasing out the shaded area outside of Ludington. Up through 2004, the deck space outside of the science lab was still just a deck, nothing special.  

Finally, in 2010, the first mention of “the senior deck” was made in the yearbook. After a long time of the deck just being a deck, seniors tried to claim it and told everyone else to stay off. 

Mrs. Karen Thompson has been a teacher at Ransom Everglades throughout all of these changes. I got the chance to sit down and chat with her about her memory of senior social life during her 40-year tenure at RE.  

According to Mrs. Thompson, when seniors claimed the deck around 2010, it wasn’t official; rather, it was a social norm that came to be through gradual change as opposed to something set in stone. “It was not a process,” said Mrs. Thompson. “It was little by little, and it just slowly became the deck. Freshman got scared at some point with the seniors and just stopped trying.” 

The deck was lined with vending machines and other refreshment options that incentivized the underclassmen to come and test their luck on the deck. But the sentiment of the seniors was quite clear. As one senior put it in the 2010 yearbook, “Many underclassmen find the senior deck intimidating. They overcome their fear when it comes time to get a snack. Everyone agrees that the senior deck is the best quad area. But it’s a little annoying when there are a lot of people on the deck, and they come up anyways. It gets really crowded, and they should still look a little scared because it is a tradition.”  

The senior deck no longer has vending machines, so an underclassman has few excuses to venture on there. Even so, I asked Jack McCaron ‘26 for his impressions of the space. “As soon as I got to RE, it was one of the first things I heard about, how you have to respect the tradition of the school and leave that nice space for the seniors,” he said. “I’m definitely going to forget to hang out there when I’m a senior because I’m going to be so used to staying off of it. I think it’s important to leave that space for the seniors, and it makes it a lot easier that I like all of them.” 

Mrs. Thompson also acknowledged the importance of the deck to campus culture. “I feel like it’s a rite of passage,” she said. “You wait your four years, and you get that space to bond with your classmates. Things can get done with studying, but there is also ping-pong.”