Speech Delivered at BHS' CAS Graduation, May 30, 2011 by Gracie Mungovan

Freshmen year, we were small. We had nervous smiles and skinny legs, opinions that faltered when brought into the light.

The death of our brother Kyle during junior year seared a road through our collective heart, destroying all that was profane in our lives. This road broke through our days as we had known them and shattered the normalcy of life. It dragged us many levels deeper then the typical teenage fare did. We fell hard and we fell together.

Just as death cut through us and intensified our interactions with our lives, a second force, both older and more powerful then death rose to complete the process. A force that turns profound life riddles into poems and illuminates meaning in chaos was activated deep within us to transform the broken pieces of the collective heart. The type of love that emerged in the community was love that had already been present; built within the infrastructure of the program and laying latent as potential within the nervousness of our freshmen smiles. Our heartbreak created a shift in the air, in our perspectives, in our psyches. This shift revealed what had been waiting for us as we grew. When the normalcy of our days was destroyed and time itself seemed to distort, a new kind of self emerged from each and every one of us; a self only present before in the glimmers of electricity that tease every soul.

We come from different backgrounds, we have vastly different perspectives on life and we certainly all look different, but when we were the most disillusioned we sought solace in each other. A tremendous love was indeed present within the differences and tension that existed between us.

When I look at my classmates now I see young people who have been touched with things older than time. The potential of freshmen year has fully exploded and actualized. The seeds of destiny and character that we held within us erupted when jarred by the twining of pain and magic, light and dark, love and death.

What makes CAS a brilliant and revolutionary program is the recognition that the work of the world is not done, that it hangs in the balance waiting to be pushed into a new direction. The institutions that uphold social inequalities are temporary, and the persistent chaos and heartbreak that plague our world are similarly transitional stages. The work that must be done in a global sense is the same work that I have seen in my CASmates. As people we have transformed from the naive potential of our freshmen selves into people in contact with deeper truths. Likewise I think the world today will age a similar transition and grow from chaotic potential into a more mature and beautiful self. In CAS acknowledgement of personal power has been built into the program; it affirms the strength of our transformations when dealing with the world. It remembers that that which occurs within somehow shifts without, that our personal revolutions have somehow left the world changed. The world is ultimately created in the images that we hold inside, and those have now been shaded and outlined in the ink of our connection to each other and the depths of ourselves. The veil between the world we live in and the world we wish to create will be pierced by the type of love that is created in communities like CAS amongst teachers and students, people of all backgrounds and abilities.

We move out into the world different people then who we were. We have encountered the mystery: the mystery of who we might become, the mystery of the Other, the mystery of different people coming together in community, and the mystery of loving deeply and having life end. However, paradoxically, even when we lost we gained. When we fell we were gathered up again by love that emerged from distant corners, we felt hands on all sides rush to keep us up, to give us a reassuring squeeze, to match us pulse to pulse, to confirm that connection was present. Having encountered this, I know we move forth, and there is a part of us deep inside that can never truly be afraid again.

Speech Delivered at BHS' CAS Graduation, May 30, 2011 by Leib Sutcher

It is often in the most unexpected moments, the ones in which we think we will gain the least, when we learn the most.  While procrastinating for this speech, something I and every other one of my CASmates does for every writing assignment we’re assigned—well, except for Callie-- I asked random people what I should write about. I was told to “just talk about the moments that brought you guys close?” Unable to shake my writers block, I started to daydream about some of the times both good and bad that we endured together:

·      In Spanish, Mr. Shiner’s class spending the first 30 mins of class each day keeping our English dream logs.

·      Or our endless Chem labs in Mr. Boltz’ where in the first 15 mins of class Aaron would finish his lab and the next 45 would be the rest of the class passing Aaron’s lab booklet around copying it.

·      Or in Mr. Smith’s class hearing stories that were unbelievable.  No really, they weren’t believable.  He lied to us every day. Whether it be about a relationship with two twins and their mother, or that he had actually checked our lab binders over the weekend, we figured him out pretty quickly and spent our class time building our bond.

These and many more early CAS experiences which were planned as academic learning turned out to be a whole different kind of learning—not the kind we had imagined, nor the kind our parents might have hoped we were having—but still the ones in which we often learned the most valuable lessons. They have brought us so close together. I hate to say it but Ms. Nesperos said it the best. One class period, when we were on her last nerve, she was trying to make a seating chart that led to a productive class period, she squeaked in her deep voice “CAS is so hard to control! I make seating chart after seating chart trying to find one where you guys are sitting next to kids that you won’t talk to. It’s impossible. You are all friends!!”

How did so many different kinds of people get to become “all friends”?

CAS throws you into uncharted waters, off the beaten path. CAS is the unbeaten path. When I chose CAS, all my friends’ parents would ask me, “Oh are you in AC too?”  I would say, “No, actually, I’m in CAS.”  They would then awkwardly say, “Oh…Oh that’s nice too!” or “That’s the video one, right?”  But CAS challenges you in ways that you wouldn’t normally just fall into. CAS forces you to push yourself and push your class mates into places and situations that are not always relaxed or safe. Whether we are debriefing Jim Wise’s speech addressing white privilege or talking about P-Boss at the senior retreat, we were often made to feel uncomfortable and confused about the world. It is these pushes that begin to shape a community that is so tight knit, that brings so many different mindsets and opinions together in a space where they can interact and develop, creating bonds that are stronger than friends. This approach to school produced the confident, questioning, and thoughtful young adults we have become.

That being said there is no other place that feels more safe or comfortable than CAS. When it comes to a distressing situation or hard day, CAS is there with Vonnie’s smile lifting you up in the darkest of times, or Zaybo’s big embrace, or Grace’s outlook on life. All there, there to hold you up. It is both comfortable and uncomfortable. Safe and unsafe. THIS is what makes CAS, and its graduates, so special.

As I look up at you now, I see the absence of one face, who I sat next to at my first ever graduation from Oxford elementary, 7 years ago, and my last graduation from King Middle, 4 years ago, and in my US History class 1 year 3 months and 5 days ago. I feel deeply saddened by the loss of the presence that Kyle always brought with him wherever he went.  Around Kyle, you felt loved, appreciated, and special, but also young, lead, and protected. I felt like whatever we were doing was important, exciting, and fun. I think Kyle has taught us all many things. And if he personally didn’t teach you something, the aftermath of the tragedy that took his life did. In remembering Kyle, we are taught the power of community, thus the power of CAS.

In your future endeavors make sure to find your CAS in the world. Continue to be pushed and push others past yours and their comfort zone, and be willing to take a risk and not always do the safe thing. At the same time, keep a community surrounding you in which you feel protected and at ease.

Kyle always ended his essays with a quote because he (and Edward Norton) said someone else has already said it best. So if you can’t top it, steal from them and go out strong. So I am stealing a line from Kyle.

And I believe in ‘one person can make a difference’ because if everybody believed they couldn’t, nothing would ever change.

Today, we are that one person Kyle wrote about. We, are the CAS Class of 2011.