Your senior year was changed, as the world has been changed, by the events of September 11. On that beautiful late-summer day last year, the campus bustled with the excitement and commotion of beginning a new year. Each of us remembers where we were when we heard the news that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center. Mr. Weatherspoon would later call it "a flashbulb moment."
Math instructor Dr. Spruill Kilgore retires after 30 years at the Academy. |
It was impossible to be alive in this country at that moment without being touched by the events of that day. In the memorial assembly we held later that week, your classmate Anne Bassett expressed our collective sentiments this way: "We have been touched . . . as a nation . . . as individuals . . . as family . . . as strangers. We are blinded by questions, glaring like midday suns. We are deafened by the silence left in the wake of this tragedy. No one escaped from this unscathed."
Many of the members of this class were touched to help those who had been so terribly affected by the violence of September 11. Students raised many thousands of dollars to support the September 11th Fund and the Afghan Children's Fund. The student government organized a first-ever afternoon of unity and support with the students of Exeter High School. Students reached out in ways that were remarkably personal and creative-for example the chain of more than 1,000 origami peace cranes fashioned by students and hung in remembrance at Ground Zero. Throughout a terrible time you led the students of this school well, and you have helped to alleviate the sorrow of those who have suffered.
Kwabena Safo-Agyekum presents Principal Tingley with the senior class gift.
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Almost immediately on the afternoon of September 11, the pundits on television began to tell us that the world had been changed forever. How much it has changed is beyond prediction, but as you faced new airport security procedures when you went home for Thanksgiving break, you saw tangible proof that the historic sense of American security had changed. One of Exeter's jobs as a school is to prepare you to face the future, and I have wondered a number of times in the last nine months how well we have prepared you to lead the post-9/11 world.
You have noticed, I'm sure, that I said lead the post-9/11 world. One of the goals of the founder of this school was that its graduates would lead what was then a new country with the well-being of others as their first priority.
On our shield the rising sun, long a symbol of knowledge and godhead, is inscribed with the phrase non sibi-"not for oneself." Leading the world from the crisis in which we are immersed will not be simple, and it may take you much of your lives to achieve.
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Adrian J. Hopkins
Part of a Larger, Global Society
"Every experience that we go through, whether positive or negative, should be taken as a part of a process," says Adrian "A-Jay" Hopkins, a four-year senior from Richmond, VA. Now 17, A-Jay has sought to make a learning experience out of each aspect of his Exeter education, whether in English class ("I love reading and writing") or religion, philosophy or economics ("I like studying the different thought patterns and forces that shape our societies"). That learning has only continued outside of the classroom, where he has been an officer with both the Afro-Latino Exonian Society and WPEA, a member of Student Council, a contributor to the Exonian and dorm proctor in Ewald North. He closed out his senior year with not one, but two significant projects: a well-regarded photo essay at the Student Art Show on what it means to be black at Exeter, and an original hip-hop CD he wrote, recorded and produced with Jelani House '02. He will attend Yale.
Looking back over your time at the Academy, what experiences do you remember most,
and why?
I will most remember my growth and development as a member of the Afro-Latino Exonian Society (ALES). Since I first got involved at age 13 in my prep year, I feel that I have matured as a person and a student. ALES always offered me the role models and figures that I needed to have during my first year. It allowed me the room to grow in my middle years, and throughout my senior year I have become a leader and contributor to Exeter's community. For as long as I live, I will always remember ALES as being the family and the perfect atmosphere that I needed for four years away from home.
What's changed most about you during your time at the Academy?
My social awareness. Never before have I been exposed to so many different types of people, views and backgrounds. Being at Exeter made me be more conscious of myself not as one boy from Virginia, but as a member of a larger, global society.
Fill in the following blank and explain: "I knew I was an Exonian when __________."
That's a tough one to answer. I don't think there is any prototypical mold that one must fit to be an Exonian. Exeter does not make the students who they are. At the Academy, the students make Exeter what it is.
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