NMH Magazine : Fall 2005

Leading Lines

At Opening Convocation on September 9, Tom Sturtevant addressed the NMH community. Below is an excerpt from his convocation speech. To read the entire speech, go to www.nmhschool.org.

This year’s convocation is special because it brings together generations of Northfield-Mount Hermonites. Since my remarks focus on the deeper chords that unite us as a community through many generations, I expect the whole audience will see tonight as a new beginning for our school.

The last line of “O Northfield Beautiful” expresses aptly our educational aim: that our students are learning “not to make a living but nobly [to] make a life.” D. L. Moody expressed a similar sentiment about how a good education must be put to a noble end when he said, “An educated rascal is worse than a rascal.” In choosing to come to Northfield Mount Hermon School, students choose to live examined lives and to lead with their hearts. The principles of service, hard work, personal responsibility, social awareness, and strong character stand as the enduring foundation of our educational mission.

I only need to look back a few days for strong examples of our school community living by the light of its principles. At registration, a parent handed me a book about the troubling decline in under-40-year-olds’ interest in news and civics. He added that he was proud of Northfield Mount Hermon for its clear commitment to teaching social and civic responsibilities. A day later I got an e-mail from 11th-grader Theo Sammets informing me that Congress this year passed a law making Constitution Day, September 17,  a new national holiday. Theo offered to take the lead in organizing events at school to hold up the importance of our constitution.

And then Hurricane Katrina knocked our nation on its ear. The response this tragedy calls for will require our best effort for many months, possibly years. Two nights ago a truck arrived at Cottage II at 9:30, and by 10 o’clock students, staff, and faculty filled it with relief supplies for the people displaced by Katrina. The next day, tenth-grader Ralph Craig led us in a moment of silence, and with great courage and honesty, shared his family’s poignant and still unfolding story from Louisiana. Later that day our admission staff admitted several students from the Gulf Coast region, and we are planning for their arrival next week. Among other initiatives, we are developing a senior seminar about the complexities of disaster response, culminating in a service trip to an affected area. The next steps will be hard and unglamorous, but it is our duty to stretch ourselves beyond the shocking images we see in the newspapers and on TV, and instead to strive to understand how we can respond appropriately to such a catastrophe.

On stage tonight is a torch, a lamp that we will light, and over the course of this weekend many graduates of Northfield will carry this torch through the town of Northfield and across the Connecticut River from this campus to the other. This symbol of light, signifying the learning and divine inspiration of our founder, and our act of carrying it across the river, are statements of our enduring commitment to the core principles of our school. For the painful sacrifice we have made in leaving this campus, we are even more deeply bound and committed to the principles that have inspired generations of women and men to make of themselves a light, to lead with their hearts, and to live examined lives of good service.

To our students, I encourage you to pursue the educational opportunities here with all your passion. Expand your horizons; work hard every day; take responsibility for our small community and accept the challenges our world has called us to address. Go into this year with the courage to develop your best self and to serve this and many other communities with all your heart. 

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