Senior Night 2025 was a moment for the class of 2025 to celebrate their time at Beaver with family, friends, and faculty/staff. In addition to hearing from Head of School Kim Samson and Student Council Representatives Lily Wong, Sisi Proctor, and Alex Chang, yearbook editor Hannah Goodman read the yearbook appreciation for the Dining Team and the yearbook dedication to Debi Ellman.
Two major highlights from the event were a “signing off” video presented by Hannah Sender and Joe Looney and a slideshow created by Aiden Emmons, which looked back at some of the most joyous memories the class of 2025 has made throughout their time at Beaver.
As per Senior Night tradition, seniors voted on a member of the Beaver community to deliver a speech. This year, it came as no surprise that Upper School English Teacher and Associate Director of College Counseling Debi Ellman was selected. You can read her speech below!
When I came to Beaver 40 years ago, I was 30, the same age as my daughter Maggie is today. I’d flown in from Los Angeles with my dog, Bogart, took a cab to an apartment I’d rented sight unseen where a mattress and sleeping bag waited for me at the front door left by my college roommate. I spent that first night sleepless, listening to a thunderstorm and thinking to myself- ok I’ll give Boston five years, five years tops.
Beaver was a different place back then. The school day ended around 3:00– no afternoon program, A’s were unobtainable in English, an edict of the dept head, Hillery Thomspson. Gym class was required and smoking, though discouraged, was allowed, for faculty, as well as students, in the unofficial lounge behind the dining hall. Back then the lunch menu consisted of an assortment of wonder bread sandwiches served by lunch ladies wearing starched white uniforms and hairnets.
I was initially hired at Beaver as dean of students, then shifted to the role of director of college counseling, a position I’d held at my first job in California. Back then there were 30 to 40 students in each senior class and applications were completed one at a time by students using portable typewriters with liquid white out close at hand. Recommendations and transcripts were painstakingly photocopied, individually labeled and snail mailed to colleges. The ordeal ended on April 15th with the arrival of thick or thin envelopes. There was no Common Application. Even more inconceivable- There were no cell phones, internet, email, or social media.
What wasn’t different though were the students- all eager to question and create. I remember organizing in the 80’s, when Live Aid was almost as iconic as Woodstock, a Beaver Teen Aid Concert with a group of seniors, who had big hair doos and mullets. Their entrepreneurial spirit brought us to a Rotary Club for fundraising, a Fenway night club for the venue and to Ticketron to handle sales. The students recruited an a-list of local musicians whose performances raised $13,000 for Bridge Over Troubled Waters, an organization that supported runaway youth. These students, like you all, had the guts to speak their minds, to find a way to make something happen, to jump all-in when it mattered.
After forty years, like you, I’m finally a senior, leaving because well, that’s what seniors do. In some ways, more than I, you guys are ready- I felt it in advisory and the classroom– the spring restlessness, minor work complaints, the joy of letting up a bit- filling up your super soakers and taking playful aim at each other rather than continuing to compete for high grades. I have to admit, I only recently learned about the game of senior assassin and am in awe of how you advocated, with wit and style, to overcome a threat to this enduring tradition. Although you guys have long been done, eager for college, you hadn’t, just a month ago, fully let go. During the final weeks of my Art of Storytelling class, we had a Moth radio contest. It was scheduled on Tuesday, following the Patriot’s Day long weekend and before senior skip day and Thursday’s parent conferences. As I stopped at Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks for celebratory refreshments, I started to run late and grew increasingly convinced that my arrival to class would be met by a room of empty desks. The project wasn’t graded and missing school another day would have meant practically a week of vacation. When I arrived, though, five minutes late in a huff, I was surprised to find every student there, the chairs perfectly arranged. What touched me even more were the stories students shared- vulnerable moments filled with humor and warmth. There was love in that room.
What I’ll remember most about your class is the way you’ve shared your love, battled back from isolation, reinvested in the value of traditions, and through your academic work- SDPs, Podcasts, a myriad of hands-on projects- tackled real-life global issues. You’ve found ways to assert the independence, self reliance, and resourcefulness Covid demanded, and use these strengths to reimagine a better world and reconstruct a sense of community at Beaver. I’ve seen that up close in my advisory. My group consists of thoughtful, assertive individuals- not best buddies but deeply bonded, a love well earned from honest, sometimes rambunctious conversations. Once they even scared away a prospective student with their let loose banter. What I’ve loved most about our group is their willingness to be vulnerable, call each other out, delight in games of toss the Beaver and conversation card prompts. As our world turned upside down, they were willing to share and listen to each other’s perspectives. They faced their fears with courage and a willingness to love.
Watching the class of 2025 celebrating prom last month at the Seaport Exchange, I was struck by the appropriateness of the venue. A generic, one room banquet hall would not have matched the individual spirits of your class. This place was full of nooks and crannies, small spaces catering to meaningful connections and a dance hall packed to capacity with classmates leaping in concert toward a limitless ceiling. The venue was a metaphor. Since freshman year, you all have filled different rooms with your distinct voices while accomplishing tremendous goals by dancing together. That’s been true in all the things you’ve made and done from awe inspiring visual art shows, theater productions, and concerts to competitions on the field and off.
I’m comforted to see, as you leave Beaver, that so many of you feel the gratitude that I do for this very special school, and my hope is that you’ll find in your life’s work a community that pushes you to be your best selves, that allows you to grow, and that inspires you to create a kinder, more forgiving world. For forty years Beaver has been that place for me. I’ll miss you.
