Individual Strength is Not Enough
06.16.20 Commencement Address
We gathered mostly in cars in a state college parking lot for our ceremony this year. Hard to gauge how my remarks were received because I could see so few faces in the crowd. After the ceremony, as he drove away, one man yelled at me, with sarcasm, “Hey, nice politics!” — by which I think he meant something like, “Nice job, principal, you ruined things again with your divisive political talk.” I guess at least that means I had his ear for some of it.
To the Randolph Union Class of 2020:
Once upon a time, you seniors were 8 or 9 years old, it was July of 2011, and I was walking the halls of our school talking with a colleague. My first days on the job, and our classrooms were empty, offices empty, health office empty, gyms empty.
Suddenly a student appeared — out of nowhere. He had a limp. He asked if the nurse was around.
We asked what was wrong. He said he’d been working in the woods with grandpa yesterday and cut his leg. He was in pain, and it was a wound — but he didn’t show any outer signs of distress, quietly asking for the nurse.
There’s more to that story — which I’ll share — but what I want to note here is that this was one of my first impressions of the youth of this community:
That our young people have deep, inner reservoirs of individual strength. His wound was not insignificant. But he was stoic, calm in the face of pain. Shouldering his burden, and walking strong. There are many young people like this here today. And many families.
Individual fortitude, individual strength. I name these qualities because we need such attributes when faced with extraordinary challenges in extraordinary times.
And there’s no mistaking it — as we gather in cars on a hilltop and hide our faces when we should be seeing smiles — that you, seniors, are graduating into an extraordinary time.
One might even say you are living in a time of the impossible.
Impossible things — are happening. One day the sun sets on victories we may never have imagined. The next day the sun rises on tragedies many of us we never thought we’d see.
Have you heard of the teenager hanging from a tree, outside a Texas school — just this week? Suicide it is believed. But suicide or homicide, it is a life destroyed — in a nation that has always struggled to value every citizen’s equal right to life, liberty and happiness. There were multiple such incidents recently. I may be ignorant but I wouldn’t have thought is possible that in June of 2020 I’d be hearing news about four [now six] people of color hanging from trees.
Other recent — seemingly impossible news — has been brighter.
President Trump’s appointee to the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch, just this week, wrote the majority opinion — many thought this not possible — guaranteeing civil rights protections to people of LGBT identities. A surprise to many. A victory for all. After years of organizing, resistance and advocacy.
What may have seemed impossible is possible these days. This has been true for much of your life.
In 2008, you were about 5 years old when a black senator from Illinois was elected to the highest office in the land. A black president. Many thought impossible. It was not.
And then many of us couldn’t believe it possible that with Obama in the White House we would see but half-measures to solve our society’s most pressing problems.
Who would have believed we’d see no comprehensive legislation to address climate change. Domestic oil production did great under Obama. Wall Street did just fine. The earth, your inheritance, not so good. An impossible disappointment.
And there are other impossible disappointments. Who would have thought that in 2020, when there is enough food to feed every human being in the world, that we’d still have millions in hunger. Who would have thought the world would need a senior project here in Randolph, Vermont that sees a student rally her peers to pack food for fellow human beings living in destitution on the other side of the world. Their impossible need is very real.
And the need is here too. The National Guard came to Berlin a few weeks ago to distribute food to Vermonters. The line was 1900 vehicles and 5 miles long.
We are living through a depression that many would have thought impossible — just a few months ago.
But even before this depression most jobs in Vermont didn’t pay a wage that could pay average Vermont housing costs. Minimum wage is impossibly low.
These are impossible times.
Speaking of impossible realities — did you know that our nation’s billionaires made billions of dollars in the last few months, yes, during everyone else’s recession. Not just a couple billion. A lotta billion.
As millions plunged into joblessness, the short list of the top 5 US billionaires — just 5 men — according to Fox news, made 75 billion dollars. Those two facts are not disconnected. The economy works very well for some, and not well at all for many.
Impossible times. There’s serious talk of closing Vermont Technical College (VTC), this campus, in the heart of Vermont. How is this possible? Of course it’s possible when the impossibly wealthy are allowed to horde so much and share so little.
Jeff Bezos of Amazon could save VTC with the tip of his pen and a flick of his wrist. But you know what, it’s not for Bezos to save VTC for us. It’s for us to save VTC from him.
Thankfully there are people like you, seniors — and your only slightly older peers — who are standing up to injustice and fighting the impossible odds.
When there was talk of closing VTC this spring, people flooded the streets — and flooded zoom meetings — with outrage and logic to hold our state officials accountable to the public good. RU alumni — like Shavonna Bent, Morgan Easton, Emily Cass and others — were involved in the resistance, organizing, rallying, speaking truth to power.
Shavonna, a former state college trustee, now studying at MIT, was in the meetings and quoted in the press. When some board members’ attention was drifting away from the topic at hand she spoke up and held them to account.
Young Vermont citizens and their allies stopped the proposal for VTC’s closure. For now. We mustn’t let the pressure up. The institutions of this state must be made to work for the people of this state.
An in that same spirit of resistance and solidarity, last weekend, down in the valley, we saw hundreds march in the streets of Randolph, a rally organized by past and present RU students. I heard three alumni speak: Brittney Malik, Janea Hudson, and Zi Bouska. They spoke of impossible times.
Brittney said that didn’t seem possible that she was even there and speaking on that day… She said that even just a few years ago she couldn’t have imagined her voice in leading a rally such as this. Zi said that he wouldn’t have thought it possible that his once-lonely call to raise the BLM flag at RU would have built momentum for massive actions like those happening now here and across our nation.
Young adults today, faced with the impossible you are discovering powers you never thought possible, and working to change the world for the better. This is beautiful. This is why — I look to my colleagues now — this is why we do what we do.
We do what we do to hear your voices more confident and sure today than when you began with us years ago. Seniors, your tech center instructors, RU teachers, college professors — we see this in you today. There was no one size fits all. As you built your skills and confidence, along your way, you chose a diversity of pathways, as various as your identities and passions.
Many of you have been pursuing career and college readiness at RTCC or in Early College settings. Many others were at RU in pursuit of the same. You’ve gained expertise in many domains, and the opportunity to apply that knowledge. Project based learning, socratic seminars, advisory, and extra-curricular programs at RU have helped you find ways to use your energy in collaboration with others. You’ve been part of AP classes, music ensembles, our GSA GLOW, Interact, the Cooking Club, Theater, and athletic teams — from cross country in the woods, to basketball on the court; from the bowling alley to the hockey rink; from the bass-fishing boat to the wrestling and gymnastic mats.
We have seen your skills and talents evolve. We see you taking on the world’s work and worry and wonder, carrying it with great individual strength.
But you’re going to need more than your individual confidence, strength and skill.
That boy I told you about, who had great reservoirs of individual fortitude, who cut his leg and came into school to ask for help. It was no small injury. He’d cut his leg with — a chainsaw.
And — he’d tried to sew it up himself — with a needle and thread — the night before — in his bathroom.
We called and he got the medical care he needed. That’s good. We need the help of others to persevere through struggle.
But why — let us pause to wonder — why didn’t he go to the hospital at first?
Children in Vermont have health insurance, so it wasn’t that. Perhaps it’s because he and his family didn’t trust.
Many people have good reason not to trust. When the billionaires make billions, while millions of fall into poverty, we have good reason not to trust — the economy, the government, the schools, the police, the health care system. I can understand distrust of institutions even while I stand here and represent one that is very fine.
Yes, institutions can be corrupted, but even when corrupt, they can be reformed. Drawing upon your individual strength, enlisting the help of others, the institutions of the world can be made to work for you and the good of all.
Today, the 19th of June, in Juneteenth, a holiday that marks a day when people who believed themselves enslaved by the law of the land learned that they were free by the law of the land. In an East Texas town, word finally arrived, on June 19th in 1865, of the Emancipation Proclamation. The impossible dream of freedom became true. After centuries of struggle, a long war, and the tide-turning fight of African Americans — enslaved and free — the institutions of the land were changed for the better of all.
Of course there’s a long way to go, even now, miles upon ages and miles. And it may seem impossibly hard for you to chart the path. We’re going to hear some of this in a song sung by one of your peers in a moment…a sense of entering a new world of great uncertainty.
Can I handle
the seasons
of my life?
…I don’t know.
But such are the seasons and the road you’re on, and the best way for you to get going is, probably, for you to honk your horns and get me to pass the mic, so we can proceed with our ceremony in celebration of you, all that you’ve accomplished, and all the good you will go on to do in this impossibly challenging time.
