Alumni Convocation, May 4, 2013
Presentation by Lydia Traill
Wyoming Seminary English Department
Good morning.
I’m grateful and honored for the opportunity to speak to you today. Although, this is daunting. For one thing, I know that none of you know me. I have only been at Sem for six years, which in the life of this particular school is the tiniest blip on the radar. One of the best, and worst things about teaching at Sem is being constantly reminded of what a blip that is. I have had the privilege, and today of all days, it becomes a burden, of teaching alongside the giants. To learn from a Morarity or a Dickinson or a Nageli is a priceless gift. But faced, literally, with the history of Sem, it is impossible not to be reminded that any teacher’s tenure here is, at best, momentary, in a long and rich history that predates her and will, no doubt, continue long after she is gone.
Thankfully, I am not tasked today with trying to encapsulate what Sem has always been. I can only speak to what is great and noble and uplifting about Sem right now, and hope that that, in itself, reminds you of what has always been true, and beautiful, and good about this school.
I suspect, though, in celebrating the school that I love, that I can start from at least, one common experience for everyone here. Defending Northeast PA to those who don’t know any better.
When I first came here, I had to explain to kids that I left a sunny job in sunny Southern California to come to Sem. Their invariable question – “Why??” I loved that it gave me the opportunity to teach them something about their school, and their hometown, that is too easy to overlook while you’re in it. And the reason I can teach them about it is because I had to learn it myself, to get over my own prejudices and assumptions, which have been thankfully disabused since I have had the privilege of working here.
You see, I had a great position out in California, teaching English, which I love, at a boarding school expressly for the arts, which I also love. But most importantly, to me at least, was that my old school prided itself on establishing an open and tolerant community; it prided itself on fostering an accepting environment so the young artists there could feel safe enough to create.
Tolerance, as hackneyed as the word may have become, and the diversity that tolerance fosters and enables, are the most fundamental elements of any educational institution. It enables any process of education; it is inherent in the exchange of ideas, and it is necessary for any growth of the mind or soul. And so I was nervous leaving behind a school that was so tolerant, so tolerant it allowed kids to make their own clothes out of garbage bags, or change their name halfway through the year to their favorite tree, or to walk around campus and attend class on stilts. What, I asked myself, could be more tolerant than that.
The answer, perhaps, obviously, is – Sem. On the surface, perhaps Sem looks like a more homogenous community than a zany arts boarding school in California. Fewer students on stilts, certainly. But though the kids in California were definitely quirky, what I came to realize was that everyone there was quirky in pretty much the same way. It was a tolerant community, for sure, but I’m not sure how much that tolerance was ever tested. Fundamentally, everyone there was pursuing the same goal, had the same political and artistic ideology, and carried the same priorities.
Diversity doesn’t have to be as in your face as it was in California, not the real diversity that truly challenges students and opens them to opportunity and tolerance. That word “diversity” has been so overused in recent years that it has almost ceased to carry meaning, but here at Sem, I see it in action every day.
Not only do we have what people traditionally mean by the term, which is a representation of various races and ethnicities. We do have that, and we pride ourselves on it, and it enriches the lives of our students and faculty every day. But we have other kinds of diversity, too, kinds that are too quickly ignored.
We have kids of millionaires here. But unlike a lot of prep schools, we also have kids who will be the first member of their family to go to college. We have kids from Taiwan, but we also have kids from both North and South Jersey. We have kids from single parent homes, from two homes, from homes with two mothers, homes with eight kids, and homes with one kid. We have parents who are preachers, and we have parents who are atheists. We have kids who actually run Democratic political campaigns, and kids who are dyed in the wool conservatives. And they’re also best friends. We have kids who spend every waking moment thinking about how they can be a better hockey player, and we have kids who spend every waking moment thinking about the next time they can get on a stage. And they’re dating.
We have kids from Vietnam living with kids from Germany, but they’re both improving their English so they can talk long into the night about fashion design. We have kids who love academics, and those who…don’t. We have kids who wear heels every day and kids who would happily live in sweatpants. We have indoor kids, and jocks, and rebels, and gospel singers, and computer programmers, and emos, and preps, and hipsters, and libertarians, and Canadians. Our kids are confronted with every kind of diversity here – diversity of language, of culture, of style, of clique, of interest, of politics, of faith, of priorities, of values. I have never been in an institution, as a student or teacher, that offers such a genuine spectrum of human perspective, and more importantly, genuinely respects that plurality. Everywhere I have worked or attended had a secret majority, a point of view that outnumbered the opposition. Sem does not.
And because of that, Sem can go one step further. Our categories are so many and so varied that eventually, we have to throw out those categories altogether. Our culture insists that there are myriad gridlines which must and should separate and distinguish people from each other; here, they get a little blurry. There is so much crossover, so much social and cultural mobility at this school, that the jock, the nerd, the dancer, and the emo don’t just get along. They’re the same person.
Sure, our faculty loves when our students try new things, but much more importantly, so do their peers. I have watched our Student Body President try football, try basketball, and finally, in his junior year, discover he was a swimmer all along and be embraced by the team. I’ve watched a shy freshman with a voice like an angel sing the national anthem at a basketball game, and be encouraged and prodded by his classmates until he finally, rightfully, starred in the musical. I’ve watched an internationally ranked wrestler try out for the play on a lark, and I’ve also watched his entire team turn out every night to watch him in action. I have watched a ninth grader profess she was pre-Med, and discover herself an Honors English major by her sophomore year in college. I’ve watched actors fall in love with Mock Trial, I’ve watched field hockey players become poets, and I’ve watched kids who decided long ago that they hated school fall in love with Spanish, or with Geometry, or History. And I know that it sounds like I just summarized the plots of fifteen after-school specials, but these stories are real. And I truly believe that it is this rare, wonderful environment that makes that development possible for our students.
I can’t speak to the history of Sem. But I do know that if you have bothered to come back, to be reunited with your peers this weekend, that you must have been offered a moment, at least, in which you could thrive and excel. Our continuing mission, then, is to multiply, to expand, to diversify those opportunities for a whole generation of young people who probably don’t know how lucky they are. But they do realize it eventually. They realize that for years, they learned the most difficult of lessons. That it’s easy to be tolerant of people when they already agree with you. That it’s inspiring to find common ground with people who are different from you in ways you thought absolutely fundamental, and to learn to trust that people will return the favor. That though you might miss the safety, the certainty, of having your journey marked out for you, if you are able to mark out that independent path, you also end up with the freedom to be diverse within yourself.
I love Sem for this. And even if I am a blip, even if I’ll never be a Nageli, I can take pride that I am part of a noble goal: to provide young people with opportunities to thrive and succeed, and to remove those limiting ideas and definitions that can so easily strip them of the desire and ability to push beyond their assumptions. And that continuing goal means that I am, with all of you, also part of a noble history. So, this is Sem, right now, and I can only hope for always. More varied and heterogeneous than it might appear, and more humble and self-effacing about that quality than it should be. I think I’ll stick around.
Thank you.