I rolled up my speech, turned away from the podium and sat back down among my fellow graduates. For just under 10 minutes, I had read aloud an inflammatory valedictory address that berated my high school in front of a gathering of hundreds, with a line of administrators staring at my back. Returning to my seat, I could see the mixture of scorn and hurt on their faces. From the audience I could hear an anxious, alarmed murmur.
I learned on that day that, when you’re making an inflammatory speech, you cross a certain line after making the first defiant statement. Afterward, there’s no taking back your words and nothing left to do but reflect. And if you speak on a big stage, you will mull those words over for years after stepping off it. What drove me to step across that line?
My graduating class had around 25 people, not terribly surprising for a boarding school in the middle of the desert southwest, an hour’s drive from the closest town. It was tiny and isolated, and the village politics were invasive and cruel. My headmaster was dying of stomach cancer. Though that would inspire pity in many, he seemed to run the school through unforgiving and unyielding deceit and manipulation.
Furthermore, nothing went as planned during my senior year. I saw several friends suspended and nearly all of my favorite teachers expelled from the institution through a series of events that no one could have foreseen, all of which have left a mark on me.
As much as I came to despise the place, though, was it right to curse my school in front its students, parents, faculty and trustees? Last Friday, I read over all six, double-spaced pages of that speech for the first time in two years. Looking back over those words, I had no recollection of exactly how angry I was, or how much I believed in what I was saying. How could my conviction have been so strong?
During my first three years, I detachedly resented the departures of my favorite teachers. They always left at the end of the year, fed up with the administration. Senior year was a completely different case. Three events in particular defined the year and ultimately drove me to make my provocative valedictory address.
First, two of my friends were expelled for making a “Jack-ass” style video of stunts and pranks. The school could have stopped the filming before it ever started, but they waited until the footage reached the local news before doing anything. They expelled almost everyone involved and denied any knowledge of the film’s making.
The second incident involved a teacher who became too close to a male student. That February, he resigned when stories began to circulate that he was a homosexual pedophile. No evidence ever surfaced, however, that he did anything explicitly sexual with any of his students. I took his side, and remained in contact with him. His story became a compelling reason to fight the administration, who many believed were speading the rumors.
Finally, the week before graduation, two of my other favorite teachers were fired after one of them bought beer for several students while chaperoning the senior camping trip. The second teacher’s only mistake was not admonishing his colleague. At a public school, summary firings would be expected, and it was difficult to argue that my school was much different. However, after both had been fired, my headmaster illegally contacted the future employer of one of the teachers. That teacher consequently lost two jobs.
His firing was the capstone of a horrible senior year. Every week it seemed the school did something that drove my friends and me to tears. Six months after graduation, my old headmaster succumbed to his cancer. Ever since, I’ve wondered if I was justified in attacking a dying man. In hindsight, none of the things that happened at my school were all that rare. They don’t all tend to occur on one campus during a single year, but every institution has its share of scandals.
The situation involving my school’s alleged pedophile became even more confusing after graduation. My ex-teacher told me that he was, in fact, sexually attracted to one of my old classmates-to whom he had since become like an “adoptive father”. This last October, while visiting my ex-teacher, he made what I perceived to be a pass at me. Looking back, how wrong was my school in suggesting he was a pedophile?
Standing on the graduation stage, I could never have predicted how my perception of my high school experience would change over time or how my anger would diminish-especially after my illusions about my old English teacher were dispelled. Looking out at the stunned faces in the audience, I told my fellow graduates, “We cannot linger here any longer. Our time is up, and things can only get better from here.”
Every day since graduation, though, I’ve searched for the conviction and the sense of purpose that I had on graduation day. Time has taken its course, and softened the past’s injustices. I’ve come to realize that I will never understand my high school experience objectively-my emotions are still too strong, and the after-effects still too confusing. My perception of the world has changed as a result of this realization. Two years ago, standing at the podium, I told my peers that I could not have been more ready to graduate, to escape. Nothing since has seemed so black and white.
