2024 Opening Ceremony Address

At the very end last year, as per tradition, I ate lunch before Commencement with the members of Signet Society and our Commencement speaker Mr. Martinelli, who graduated from Haverford in 1979 and sent two sons here. I asked each person to go around the table and name a moment when they felt Haverford was at its best. The 15 Form VI students thought about it for a moment, and proceeded to tell stories about Haverford.

While each of these stories occurred in a different place with different people, a clear theme emerged. Each story was a moment when that boy built an unexpected relationship with someone – a teacher, a coach, an advisor, a fellow student – and that relationship allowed him to do something that he didn’t previously know he could do. For some, that accomplishment occurred in the classroom, for others on the stage, and others still on the fields. But every student talked proudly and gratefully about how someone else in this community had given them the belief, the inspiration, and the guidance to become someone who they hoped they could be – to become a better version of themselves. When it was Mr. Martinelli’s turn, he spoke about his wife dying unexpectedly 5 years ago, and how the Haverford community supported him through his grief. He said that people who he didn’t even know, or hadn’t spoken to in years, came to his side to help him do the thing he wasn’t sure he could do, which was to move forward with his life. 

Haverford is, by any standard, a great school. We have a world class faculty, a talented, diverse, and dynamic student body, phenomenal facilities, and a program that challenges you all in myriad ways. The outputs from those are remarkable. Just last year, students won awards for everything from research on how AI can help maintain honeybee health to articles in The Index to essays on the impact of disinformation on diplomacy. Our robotics team once again won a state championship and finished in the top 20 at the world championships. Sixteen Form VI students earned recognition from the National Merit Society, and 19 Lower School students earned awards in the Gladwyne Library’s junior author contest. Our Upper School fall play and spring musical were nominated for 11 awards, and both of our Middle School singing groups, the Centennial Singers and the Haverford Boys Choir, won awards for their performances, including an award for “outstanding character.” Athletically, in addition to keeping the sweater, our teams won Inter-Ac championships in soccer, water polo, golf, swimming, tennis, and lacrosse, won national championships in both crew and Middle School squash, and won the Heyward Cup, which measures competitiveness across all sports in our league, for a record 21st time. That set of achievements is astonishing, and is something that we should be deeply proud of. 

While those accomplishments might be happening in different spaces, though, they are all part of a larger process of education at Haverford, a process that, as those Signet Society members articulated, begins with relationships; often unexpected relationships. Those relationships inspire us. They push us to see parts of ourselves that we didn’t see before. They help us work through adversity. They give us comfort and joy. And through them, we are able to do things in the classroom, on the stage, in the studios, and on the fields that we didn’t know we could. That is how we become our best selves and accomplish all those remarkable things. It’s not simply because we ourselves are remarkable, but because we allow ourselves to learn from one another and to grow together. 

And at the center of that process is humility; a recognition that while each of us has strengths, we also have weaknesses. And that it is our responsibility as members of this community to allow others to use their strengths to improve us, and in turn to share our strengths with others to improve them. That is what each of those Signet Society members described; a willingness to build a relationship with someone who they didn’t know. A willingness to allow that person to help them. A willingness to do something they were not fully confident in doing. And, a willingness to do that same thing for others. 

Sometimes, humility is seen as the opposite of confidence. At Haverford, we see confidence as virtue, and it is not a coincidence that confidence and humility are side-by-side on the walk of virtues. Humility is, however, the opposite of arrogance. Arrogance is a belief that one is superior to others. It can exist on this campus with the belief that we are simply better than other schools. It can exist with a belief that certain people or certain groups are better than others; that if you play a certain sport, or get a certain grade, or live in a certain neighborhood, or hang out with certain people you are superior. 

That attitude of arrogance, of superiority, prevents us from doing what those Signet Society members described. It stops us from being open to the reality that a person who we don’t know – or that we might not like very much – is capable of teaching us something, and might even become that close friend who pushes us to be our best. It stops us from recognizing activities that we have never considered doing might open our eyes to things we had never seen before, and could even become activities that we love to do. And it stops us from embracing our responsibility to share our talents with others to care for and support them.

If we stay grounded in humility, though, we will take full ownership of our responsibility to each other and to this place. We will see one another not as competitors for superiority, but rather as peers with a shared responsibility to each other and to this community. And when an individual or a group achieves success, whether through robotics, writing, singing, acting, or competing on fields, we will see those success not as their achievements, but as our achievements, for we will know that we all played a role in that success.

And so, our virtue of the year is humility. When we devote ourselves to that virtue, we will reach new heights individually and collectively, and we will develop the true confidence to meet the opportunities and the challenges that this year may bring. Not a hollow, fake confidence. But an earned confidence that stands side-by-side with humility. A confidence that comes from knowing that you have an entire community behind you, helping you to become your very best self. 

Here is to a fantastic 2024-2025 school year. I cannot wait to see all that it entails.