Student Commencement Speech | Fran Duffy-Boscagli ’17

June 2, 2017

Francesco Duffy-Boscagli ’17 was selected by his classmates to deliver the student Commencement speech.

Since my sophomore year, I’ve been writing for our school newspaper, the El Batidor, or as we like to call it affectionately, El Bat. My three-year career in journalism began my sophomore year during which I was placed in the opinion section. I gave Cate my pointed opinions on pressing topics like our response to the drought and our shortening attention spans. My junior year I moved into news and features, opting to keep my opinions to myself. I wrote teacher interviews and a groundbreaking article about the varsity art program. But this year I decided to try something completely different. I needed something to freshen up my journalistic portfolio, and the solution was simple: I imposed myself as El Bat’s resident reviewer and created a series of articles I dubbed “Carp Gems”. Each weekend I would go into the field, explore our little town, and write reviews on Carpentaria’s most popular spots. The series has helped me understand things I may never have otherwise about “Carp” and its various hidden spots. So without further ado, I present my final Carp Gem: Cate School.

Situated at the top of a mesa overlooking Carpinteria, spectacular is only the simplest way to describe Cate School. In Carp and Santa Barbara, skyscrapers don’t exist, but at Cate the eucalyptus trees that line roads and walkways jet out of the ground, and their uppermost leaves undoubtedly scratch where the sky begins. Their monumental size even brings to scale Mr. Williams, who is certainly one of the tallest headmasters in the country—if not the planet. Venture further into campus and you’ll see the off-white buildings accentuated by dark, wooden doors and windows, and then accentuated again by the green of an olive tree or the grass on senior lawn, that gives the campus its signature look, a look I fell in love with the moment I took my first tour, and only kept falling in love with every day thereafter. I know personally that there are days when all I have to do is step outside to realize how absolutely lucky I am to attend this School. There is something about it that feels as if you are inside a skillfully painted watercolor, one where all the colors were made for each other and the brush strokes allowed them to rest exactly where you’d expect. When it’s cold at Cate fireplaces are set ablaze and their welcoming flames and reassuring crackles set one of the campus’s various wood paneled rooms to life, bringing forth that snug feeling you might get on a cloudy afternoon in the Johnson Library. The look of this campus serves to attract us and it does a great job of that: we are drawn in like moths to a well-lit dorm room at night.

It’s also the Harkness tables, those big, sturdy examples of carpentry that make Cate the place it is. Those tables, as well as every other table on campus, whether it be in the dining hall, the ’25 House common room, the physics lab, or the Mac Room, serve as the highways over which ideas travel at the speed of sound. They are tables over which discoveries are made as students let their voices dart back and forth between classmates and teachers alike. But maybe what makes Cate more beautiful than anything else is the fact that we don’t need tables to have those conversations. Our minds are always ready to share with others the vast wells of knowledge we acquire every day, whether it be describing the fundamental differences between a classic and modern revolution as we construct tacos in the dining hall, explaining differentiation to someone who doesn’t take calculus on the walk to tennis practice, or arguing over the meaning of symbol in Mrs. Dalloway during the five-minute passing period between English and biology. It is these conversations which provide fuel to the academic machine that is Cate School. It is not only curiosity but the ability of a Cate student to act on that curiosity that drives us forward. This academic passion is something we might often take or granted or even forget about, especially on nights when homework is piling up and it seems like time is a lost concept, but it is something that makes Cate unique. Here we are explorers, conquistadors of the unknown.

Cate is a boarding school, which means a majority of the student body lives on campus. A few local kids, like myself, have the great privilege of going home each night to their families, but for the most part, this heaven upon the Mesa sponsors Carpinteria’s longest running, most study-oriented sleep-over. As a day student, I had to decide if I wanted to leave each day immediately after sports, to the familiarity of home, or if I wanted to stay until the late hours, forcing myself to assimilate. I opted for the latter in hopes that I’d be able to blend in with the rest of my classmates, who instead of waiting out at the “day bench” on Mesa Road, retreated to the warmth of their rooms as study hours began. I knew I had achieved my goal of becoming a “day boarder” when at the beginning of sophomore year Lila asked me during breakfast, “So, which dorm are you living in this year?” She and a few others seemed a little astonished when I revealed that I would be living at home, in Santa Barbara, as I had the year before. But the fact that most people live here on the Mesa, coupled with the fact that only 270 people attend the School, lends itself to the strong sense of community Cate establishes. Through mutual respect, trust, and altruism, each person on the Mesa has contributed to a place not only where people feel safe to express themselves and their thoughts, but feel safe to help others express theirs.

So with a foundation of trust, Cate, to everyone here, is a community of friends. I understand how it’s unrealistic to assume everyone here is on perfect terms with each other, but as Mr. Powell told me during freshman orientation, “Don’t worry, we only accepted the nice ones.” I have found that so true: at the end of the day, even when you’re walking to the dining hall after a long cross-country practice and your muscles are aching, you’ll still smile when someone you know, only because you sat together at formal dinner once, gives you a wave and a quick hello. But if you need proof that we’re a community of friends look at assembly. Our Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays are collectively brightened when Ian and Joe teach us how to juju on that beat, or when Connor makes his birthday announcement, and of course when we are honored by the advice of Dr. Love. We clap together after those announcements from Mr. Wood explaining to us that we don’t have to clap after every single announcement, and after birthday announcements that last a little longer than they probably should, and the cheering that the crowd erupts into when Mr. Williams bestows upon us a free day. It’s fair to say that everyone at Cate, faculty and students alike, know the feeling of walking out of assembly with hands tingling after 30 straight minutes of clapping. Assembly really is the perfect example of Cate functioning as a community. There’s something beautiful in how even the most pointless or cringeworthy announcements are still met with smiles, or how when someone is clearly nervous when they’re giving an announcement we’ll all cheer just a little louder than usual to respect bravery.

Here at Cate, we understand each other; that is really the most valuable thing we are given on the Mesa. We understand how scary it can be to step in front of the entire School to give an announcement, or how overloaded we feel on nights where it’s just impossible to finish all our homework, or how homesick people can sometimes feel. At Cate, we know how it feels to wake up painfully early, whether it be for early lab or a work crew, and we even know how it feels when nothing seems to be going right. But at Cate, there is one motto that encompasses all: Servons. Servons doesn’t only mean public service night, although that is a part of it. Servons on campus first means serving each other. We are here to remind each other that things will be okay, to remind each other that we know how it feels when the grills are charred because people were making stir-fries during first lunch, or how it feels when we don’t have a weekend because of an especially harsh S-week. Servons means empathy. And that can manifest itself in hundreds of ways. It can be as simple as a hug, or something less obvious, like sitting in the Mac Room with your friends listening to music or taking a moment to just recline on those comfortable couches while you all make jokes and have a conversation about what you’ll later characterize as nothing. For others that empathy might be represented in a purposeful lack of action, those moments when you’re allowed to just be alone, with nobody asking you or calling you. A brief moment of silence. But empathy can also be big, like Morgan’s idea to put college rejection letters up outside the theater, not only to show the School that rejection is normal and okay, but to show the entire senior class that there is nothing to be ashamed of– everyone gets rejected.

These acts of empathy are what make leaving this place such a difficult task. Not only have we found somewhere beautiful, somewhere we can be challenged by Cate’s brilliant teachers, and somewhere we can be a part of a community, we’ve found a place where people understand what we’re feeling. And for all the help they’ve offered every day and the help we’ve offered in return it’s nearly impossible to imagine just saying goodbye for the last time, or at least for the last time in next five years. But I am also filled with excitement and pride, because I can say with confidence that we will go on to do great things. We will find the things that drive us if we haven’t already, and we will pursue those with the determination we have learned here. Cate has given us the education and the values, values like servons’ that will guide us into whatever is to come next. As much as it hurts to have to say goodbye, we must look forward with an eye of optimism. It is with this glimmer that we will finally escape the so-called Cate bubble; ready to challenge, innovate, create, and learn.

I want to leave you with a story that you can do with what you will. It was the second day of Yosemite and my pod was getting ready to fall asleep in the clearing we’d found by a lake. By the time the tarp was down we’d made the decision to sleep without tents so we could let the stars above lull us to sleep. A few clouds draped the sky, but for the most part we could see though them, into the vastness of the Milky Way. A few minutes after I’d snuggled into my sleeping bag I felt a single drop of water touch my nose. I looked over to everyone, with a little grin on my face and said, “It’d be funny if it started to raining right now”. And then, of course, no more than five minutes later, completely out of the blue it began pouring. It was as if someone had turned on some cosmic tap right above us. When the rain began hitting our sleeping bags everyone rushed to pull another tarp together on top of us while saying “Frannnnn, you jinxed it, you made it rain”. I’ll just say this: anyone can control the weather.

Thank you, everyone, for all the good times, the hard times, and every memory we’ve made here. I wish us all luck and so much more.