On Wednesday evening, June 10, the 31 seniors who make up the BFS Class of 2009 tossed their caps in the air at the New York Marriott at the Brooklyn Bridge, a rite of passage signifying the end of their days as BFS students and the beginning of their adventures as BFS alums.
"This is an occasion for congratulations, celebration and thanks. We start by congratulating the class of 2009," said Head of School Dr. Michael Nill during his opening remarks. He extended tremendous thanks and gratitude to the parents and guardians who joined the BFS faculty in a years-long partnership to raise these young women and men to adulthood.
He shared several memorable and anonymous comments from the seniors, each of whom he'd met with privately throughout the spring semester, an annual ritual for Dr. Nill as students prepare to leave BFS:
I value the community and appreciated that it's different than other private schools.
I like Quaker meeting. It's a powerful part of building a community and letting people be heard.
Other anonymous comments stressed the good relationships between students and faculty, cited as a rarity among private schools in the city.
"Your excellence and your specialness has been noticed," added Dr. Nill, "especially your commitment to service," stressing that this class in particular set a high standard for individual and group service projects within and outside the school community. He also made two requests of this newest crop of alums: "First, stay connected to each other...Second, stay connected to the school. We need you to be role models, to come back and teach, to come back and volunteer."
Commencement Speaker Joe Chan, President of the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, chair of the Board of Directors for the summer enrichment program Horizons at Brooklyn Friends School, and Board member of Horizons' National, recalled his days as a high school student in Connecticut on the cusp of his own graduation. "I was ready for a change," he said, "a place where I could reinvent myself." That place became New York City where he attended college and eventually became a senior policy advisor at City Hall.
He shared a few simple lessons he's learned since tossing his own cap in the air some twenty years ago. "One; very few things are that big of a deal," he began, garnering much laughter. He recounted college stresses, classes he agonized over which at the time seemed of utmost importance but which in the end had little impact on his future. "Two, you don't need to know what you want to do when you grow up," he quipped, referring to his shifting career interests throughout college, and his brief time spent as an elementary school teacher before realizing he wasn't cut out for the job. "Three, serendipity happens," he said, explaining his life trajectory from being a Horizons summer enrichment student from a single-parent home in Connecticut, to adult life in New York and a position at City Hall, to heading the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership and serving on the board of Horizons National, which led to his being instrumental in initiating a Horizons program at BFS, the first of its kind at any school in New York City.
He concluded with the words spoken to him by one of his elementary school students years ago at the end of a particularly harrowing day. "It's all good, Mr. Chan. It's all good," a simple wisdom he passed along to the graduating class.
Dr. Yolanda Pierce '90, a Professor of African American Religion and Literature at Princeton Theological Seminary, community activist and Christian minister, received this year's George Fox Distinguished Alumna Award, an honor named after the founder of Quakerism.
Dr. Pierce spoke of BFS' continuing impact on her life, specifically attending Quaker Meeting for all those years while a student here. She recounted a time as an adult when she hoped to get away from it all for a day and find some solitude. She decided on an isolated bench at the aquarium in Philadelphia in the middle of the week when she expected the place to be empty. As she sat down to write and collect her thoughts she was besieged by busloads of school children whose cacophony sent her running in frustration for the exit. Then she thought it over and went back to her bench. "I didn't need it to be Quaker Meeting all around me for it to be Quaker Meeting within me," she said.
Anyone who's been in the BFS lobby when the school day ends knows exactly what she means. "What I thought was noise, was actually the human experience," she concluded, thanking BFS for instilling in her a respect and reverence for the human spirit.
Head of Upper School Roxanne Zazzaro continued the ceremony's mix of profundity and levity when she introduced Student Senate Vice President Sherika Campbell and President John Vielot as "Batman and Robin, the dynamic duo," whose tireless and heroic work for the school has given them nearly legendary status among the Upper School student body.
"We don't know the adventures that lie ahead of us," said Ms. Campbell, addressing her graduating peers, "but we are prepared to stay the course. A tree is only as strong as its roots, and I thank you all."
Mr. Vielot spoke about his enthusiasm for his service to the school and the community. "Some call me a workaholic, but work-dedicated is more accurate." He also spoke bluntly about being a young, urban African-American man in today's world and the stereotypes that go along with that. "BFS has shaped my identity in more ways than I can imagine," he said. He looked ahead to the fact that this fall he and his classmates will be freshman all over again. "Tonight we start over," he concluded.
The highlight of the evening just may have been the words of English Department Chair Sidney Bridges, chosen by the graduating class to be their faculty speaker. In an eloquent speech that was more performance poetry than discursive invocation, Mr. Bridges spoke directly to the graduating class. "I have great confidence in you and great expectations from you...You are the new world stimulus package...You're family-centered, other-directed...You are pioneers of new ways of befriending," he said, adding a twist to the meaning of the word Friends. He also praised their deep interest in the environment and global affairs, even giving their yearbook an ecological theme. "You have also given me a case of the giggles," he said. Mr. Bridges urged them to continue their strong record of service, reminding them that "to do good is to do well," contrary to this generation's definition of doing well as a measurement of material wealth.
Ms. Zazzaro concluded the ceremony with the poem Allegiances by William Stafford:
It is time for all the heroes to go home
if they have any, time for all of us common ones
to locate ourselves by the real things
we live by.
Far to the north, or indeed in any direction,
strange mountains and creatures have always lurked-
elves, goblins, trolls, and spiders:-we
encounter them in dread and wonder,
But once we have tasted far streams, touched the gold,
found some limit beyond the waterfall,
a season changes, and we come back, changed
but safe, quiet, grateful.
Suppose an insane wind holds all the hills
while strange beliefs whine at the traveler's ears,
we ordinary beings can cling to the earth and love
where we are, sturdy for common things.