2003-2004 Top Scholars Named At Gunnery’s 155th Convocation

 WASHINGTON —The Gunnery’s 155th annual Convocation on September 12 marked the formal beginning of the 2004-05 school year. The Gunnery is a private coeducational college preparatory boarding and day school for ninth–twelfth grade students.

The event began with an official welcome by Head of School Susan Graham and the head of student government, Senior Prefect Malachi Garff, followed by prayers for the success of the school year and the singing of the Gunnery hymn.

Senior Prefect Malachi Garf told the student body, “We’ve all been thrown into a melting pot, blending people from over 21 states and 13 countries, blending more than 280 personalities, but we all still share our struggles, our glory, and everything in between. The support system at The Gunnery is one of the greatest benefits of living in such a small community, where you have your faculty, your prefects, your monitors, and your peers all there to lend you that helping hand.”

She continued, “Every student has something to teach — and every teacher still has something to learn.”

In welcoming the students to the new school year, Ms Graham spoke about the summoning of courage in the face of fear. The subject was appropriate for a date so close to 9/11.

The students laughed supportively as she recounted her struggles in a statistics class when she started her master’s program after teaching English for 15 years. “I was never more afraid than when, after handing in my first graduate level statistics assignment, I received the following comment from the esteemed Professor Anderson, chairman of the Psychology Department and my new advisor: ‘I am returning this otherwise blank paper to you because someone has scribbled nonsense from start to finish and signed your name,’” she told the students and then she continued, “You must name your fear, own your fear, and attack it with a vengeance using the one sure resource available to us. Courage is being scared to death of the journey, but taking the first steps nonetheless.”

 The naming of the highest scholars by grade level for the previous 2003-04 year was a high point of the ceremony.

Included among honorees was Katherine G. Danzinger and Benjamin L. Greenfield of Newtown.

Katherine was also named the top scholar for the school for the 2003-04 year, along with Joseph B. Clapis of Southbury.

In conferring the academic honors, Academic Dean Eileen Kelly-Aguirre quoted liberally from Alfie Kohn’s controversial book, No Contest. In his book the author questions the validity of competition as a motivator for academic success.

Dean Kelly-Aguirre encouraged personal goal setting and collaborative study as an alternative to the envy and defeatism of measuring oneself against others.