My friends, I had not intended to discuss this controversial subject at this particular time. However, I want you to know that I do not shun controversy. On the contrary, I will take a stand on any issue at any time, regardless of how fraught with controversy it might be. You have asked me how I feel about high school. All right, here is how I feel about high school.

If when you say "high school" you mean the time consumer, the educational prison, the slacker’s nightmare which demands hard work, requires Design Cycle Experiences, incites stress, awakens the reality of deadlines, yea, literally obliterates any hope for eight hours of sleep; if you mean the arduous tasks that deteriorate the young and old from the apex of energized, organized learning into a hopeless heap of tears and tension and anxiety and procrastination and preoccupation, then certainly I am against it.

But if when you say "high school" you mean the home away from home, the resume builder, the overwhelmingly supportive community that sacrifices its energy to further the educational drive in students’ hearts, the taste of ambition on their lips, and the raging flame of success in their eyes; if you mean Spirit Day cheers; if you mean the service opportunities that put warm meals into homeless hands on frosty, crisp mornings; if you mean the progression from two hundred strangers to sisters, enabling them to thoroughly enjoy their high school memories, and to forget, if only for a little while, that it will soon all be over; if you mean that education, the level of which fully prepares for the first year of college, the colleges that vow to nurture our future doctors, our lawyers, our artists, our engineers, our teachers and writers, to continue the experiences that high school has initiated, then certainly I am for it.

This is my stand. I will not retreat from it. I will not compromise.