Remarks by Luke Harris, Class of 2003,
at Milton Academy's Commencement
June 6, 2003

Mr. President, members of the Board of Trustees, Doctor Robertson, members of the faculty, and administration, parents, family and friends, students and members of the Class of 2003. Like any nice Jewish boy I shall begin with my mother; my mother who by the time I was born in 1984 had already practiced the male-dominated profession of law for thirteen years and had already read every famous feminist treatise from The Second Sex to Sisterhood is Powerful. She wanted me to grow up without the slightest speck of male chauvinism.

Instead of feeding me a healthy diet of baseball cards and Sports Illustrated, she left me in front of the VCR to watch her entire collection of Broadway musicals. So by the time I reached first grade while all the other boys were singing "Take me out to the ballgame, take me out to the crowd," I was signing "The sun will come out tomorrow"; "Sunrise, sunset, sunrise, sunset"; "Don't cry for me Argentina."

I followed my mother's idea of trying to be individualistic so I took up short track speed skating. The sport where you race around the link for ten laps in tights looking at the butt of the person in front of you. So at the age of 9 I was given skates with 14-inch blades and a suffocating tight suit. Let me paint a mental mixture for you. Have you ever seen how a hot dog is packed in the frozen food section of the supermarket? Picture 5 feet of that on ice skates.

Now, I remember that I was invited to Lennie Bergerson's older brother's bar mitzvah, and we celebrated by having a skating party. And while the other boys showed up in their hockey garb, I showed up in my skating outfit; knee pads, a helmet, skates, and the tights. So while the girls were pirouetting and the boys were passing pucks, I was doing laps around the rink. To say the least I was an individual.

Once I started down the path of individuality, I thought I would never look back; but lately I have been worrying that I have lost my way. I feel controlled by a force stronger than gravity, a force that's pushed me to abandon my neatness for SAT vocabulary words and sanctioned extracurricular activities. The force is the push on all of us not to make any career mistakes, to be perfect adolescents on the way to college.

The push has become stronger than the pole to experiment, create, explore, and be oneself. It is a force of conformity. It is a force that blocks risk-taking. And with each passing generation it exerts its push earlier in chapters of our biographies. Maybe it's a generation thing. My grandfather's generation saved the world when the stakes were high. My father's generation were rebels at our age. They were the beatniks, the hipsters, the yuppies, the groupies. They were the civil rights workers, the Peace Corps volunteers, the war protesters. They hitchhiked cross country from Selma, Alabama, to Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco, to Woodstock.

They grew up in an era more forgiving to young people when the stakes did not seem so high. My generation is becoming the yuppies that my parents scorned. We are the most over-protected, over-monitored, and over-scrutinized on record. We were the babies of "baby on board". We were the babies for whom living rooms were baby-proofed. We were the babies who were monitored by baby monitors. We were the children who benefited from parental advisory labels. We are the adolescents who, by almost never making the mistakes our parents made, are doing them proud.

Modern high school is a strange hybrid. A cross between an institution of higher learning and a daycare center. We are entrusted with the revolutionist teachings of Mao, Che and Marx, yet every time we have to visit a member of the opposite sex in a dorm we have to put a shoe in the door. We are getting ready to change the world while the deans are setting the limits.

A subtle manifestation of this limiting setting is the need not to hurt anyone's feelings. Our fear of offending literally anyone has gone so far as to endanger our collective sense of humor. Through humor we can laugh at ourselves, but if everything and everyone is off limits, then there will be no controversy, there will be no humor. Woody Allen will be gone; Richard Prior, gone; Jerry Seinfeld, gone; Saturday Night Live, gone; Oscar Wilde, gone; Moliere, gone; Shakespeare, gone.

Maybe it isn't a generation thing. Maybe it's just the fear of the moment, of Columbine, of the Twin Towers, microscopic poisoned powders in the mail. This fear, however, has been morphed into a cold sweat about being different from others. In our politically correct zeal to tolerate each other's individuality, we have ironically become more homogenized. Our mass media concentrated in a smaller and smaller number of outlets has reinforced this homogeneity.

We are so bombarded by commercials that we cannot help but internalize the billboard norms. We are told subliminally to dress the same, act the same, and essentially be the same so we all buy the same products. The powerful media ads pressure us to tune out politically. Rather than to protest or advocate, we are bombarded with messages to consume. Even the music industry, which in the 20th century was one of the best mediums to express social awareness, rebellion, and social change, has now been co-opted into a big money grubbing business.

Pop culture has gone from the Beatles singing about "giving peace a chance" to many modern pop stars advertising their favorite products in their songs. My hope is that a few, brave graduates from Milton Academy will fight the forces that block their individuality, their passion, their humor. In the words of the lyricist for the Grateful Dead, "They become themselves before someone else does." And for their courage they will be rewarded as masters of their craft, beacons for their own children's generation, and dreamers of the impossible dream. Thank you.