Last week at Assembly, Deputy Senior Prefect, Alexander Humphreys, delivered a speech to his peers about fostering a school culture whereby students actively try and desire to become the best version of themselves and improve their surrounding community.

I see a lot of things on Facebook. Ninety per cent of the time they are pretty pointless and serve no purpose other  than to distract and humour me for a moment. The other 10 per cent, well, they’re still distracting, but sometimes they get me thinking. Recently I saw a video of a guy dancing at a music festival. He was dancing alone, like a Yo Gabba Gabba wannabe while everyone else looked at him like he was a man possessed. For two whole minutes, this guy kept dancing without a care in the world, despite the fierce judgement he faced. Then out of nowhere, someone joins him – a minute later, another person – 30 seconds later, another person joins them. Within four minutes, one man turned into a mosh pit.

It’s probably at this point many of you will be thinking that I am going a little crazy myself, and some of you will be wondering – “Humphreys, where on earth are you going with this?”. Well, you see, if we look throughout history we are able to identify examples of individuals who managed to inspire others to join their cause. Abraham Lincoln inspired a nation to get rid of slavery.  Nelson Mandella, Martin Luther King – both of whom inspired their respective nations to end “de jure” segregation and Mala Yusafzai – who, despite being shot by the Taliban, pushed for universal education for girls.

These are all common, and now clichéd, examples of inspiring individuals within history. Nonetheless, we can draw an important parallel between the experiences of the dancing man to the four individuals I just mentioned. In each example, all of these individuals faced judgement and adversity through which they had to persevere. Yet it was their passion and determination for justice, or respect from others for their moves, that enabled them to gain collective support.

Now, I think we can all agree that there is a bit of a difference between being pursued by the Taliban for your cause and your dance moves being judged by your fellow festival goers, but I deliberately included my weird Facebook example in this speech to show there is a broad spectrum of influence an individual can have on a group.

You can start a mosh pit, or inspire a race to push for civil rights. Closer to home –  if you are someone who isn’t known for trying something in the creative arts and do so, you have the potential to inspire others to do the same. If you are someone willing to call someone out for saying something offensive, then you might inspire someone else to do the same. At the end of the day, history shows us one person does have the ability to influence the “many” in some form.

When we came up with the motto “one for many”, we designed it knowing we weren’t just satisfied with being a school that respects the passions of everyone. We thought that should be a given. We also wanted to create a school culture whereby we actively tried and desired to become the best version of ourselves and improve our surrounding community.

Realistically, I have no right to come up and here and say this to you. I do not believe I am someone who has created a paradigm shift within the community or, on a smaller scale, called people out when I probably should have.

But it is my hope that one day I will be able to have an influence on society in some form, and without dreams and goals what is the point of persevering through the hard times.

More importantly though, I believe that while every person in this room has the opportunity to make a difference to others, many of us, myself included, will not be able to fulfil their full potential because of our susceptibility to peer pressure and fear of judgment.

We live in a society which loves to classify people into a multitude of groups based on our behaviours. People are placed on a spectrum based on their political beliefs – our generation’s name – Gen iI – is a tagline placed on us because of our apparent obsession with technology.

Even within our own community, we demarcate people based on whether we think they are “athletes” or “academics”, “cool kids/ sick lads” or “introverts”. It can become very hard for us to break the identities assigned to us – identities with which we did not chose to associate ourselves and had no control over  and sometimes people close to you will try to pressure you to remain in those identities or even pressure you to do things to make you conform to their owned defined identity.  

But as that dancing man once showed us, if you are willing to ignore the judgement of others, if you are willing to ignore the pressure to stop doing what you believe is right or ignore the pressure to stop doing something that you love, then at some point you will inspire others to join your cause.

As individuals, we deserve the chance to do the things we enjoy and stand up for what we believe in … as friends we have the obligation to support our mates in that journey.

The more confidence and support we provide to our friends, the more chance  they have of identifying skills that they never thought they had, or the more chance they have of standing up to someone for what they believe in.

Tomorrow night, as you know is the opening night for “Guys and Dolls”. Over the past 5 weeks, I have heard numerous stories of boys, such as Ben Coultass Roberts in Year 12 who, before this musical, had no experience in Drama, and tomorrow night will perform in a major role. It’s the confidence to try new things without fear of judgement, like Ben had, which inspires others to do the same.  It’s the confidence that, as friends, we can give boys like Ben, to enable them to discover talents they never thought they had.

It’s not easy to stand out from the social demarcation which has been placed on us and to stand up and do something you know will benefit your community – but as a school we can help the boys who are willing to do that and enable them to achieve their goals through our support – because it is these boys who could inspire you to do the same.

Don’t be afraid to stand out, and don’t be afraid to support those who do.

To end this speech today I would like to say this:

“An empowered individual leads to an empowered collective”.

Every boy in this room has the potential to empower us all.

Alexander Humphreys (12/JN)