Great Neck North High School principal Bernard Kaplan said he isn’t challenging the school’s seniors graduating Thursday to do well in college or make money – he challenged them to keep loving.
“We live in a world of increasing hostility, increasing distrust, increasing self-righteous posturing,” Kaplan said at the Class of 2015 commencement ceremony held at LIU Post’s Tilles Center. “It is easy to fall into hate’s trap as we navigate our own lives, as we interrelate in our communities and as we face this troubled world as a troubled nation.”
Kaplan’s final challenge to the students was for them to keep love in their hearts as they move on in the world.
“Keeping love alive is the single most important thing any of us can do in our lives,” Kaplan said.
Kaplan said when he first met the Class of 2015 at the beginning of their freshman year, he asked them to make the most out of life and leave the school better than when they arrived. He said all the graduates have left a fine legacy at Great Neck North.
Kaplan then sang about keeping “loving going” with a selection of Great Neck North graduates — a song he wrote.
The theme of love continued as Great Neck North senior choral members sang selections from the Broadway musical “Rent” – a show Great Neck North put on in November 2014.
After singing “One Song Glory,” “Without You” and “Will I?” the group sang the musical’s iconic “Seasons of Love.” As the choral members sang the lines “It’s time now, to sing out/Though the story never ends/Let’s celebrate/Remember a year in the life of friends,” nearly the entire student body behind them, along with faculty members, stood up and began clapping along to the beat of the song.
Great Neck North valedictorian Jessy Lin and Salutatorian Daniel Hanover were also recognized.
Nadine Hakim, senior class secretary, said although she feels a knot in her stomach as she graduates, it is more important to live with those knots, as they remind each person that they are alive.
“The knot loosens when I think of the teachers who empowered our desire to learn and inspired our ability to succeed and have been arming us all along with knowledge and confidence to conquer life,” said Hakim, one of 263 to graduate from North. “We ambitiously move forward to change the world as adults rather than hold onto the past like children.”
She advised the students to not wake up and forget to feel the passion and ache inside their stomachs.
“We live in those knots, and those knots live in us,” she said.
Great Neck School District Superintendent Tom Dolan, who was scheduled to leave his position at the end of June, was given an honorary degree as a Great Neck North High graduate.
Dolan will be replaced by current Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction for Garden City Public Schools Teresa Prendergast.
In his last speech given to a graduating Great Neck North High class as superintendent, Dolan drew from the cultural phenomenon of “binge watching” — the process of watching more than one episode of a television show over a long period of time that has been made easier with the advent of television-streaming websites such as Hulu and Netflix.
He said while binge-watching can be considered a smart, contemplative way of watching television, it is not the way to view the episodes of your life.
He told the graduates that while some episodes of their lives will be happy, others will be sad — but they all must be watched one at a time.
“Every episode must be viewed independently and in the order in which the big network above chooses to present them,” Dolan said. “There is no fast-forward, no pause and no rewind.”
“Those moments, those episodes, those experiences will all combine to make a life worth living,” Dolan said.
Dolan left the crowd with lyrics from the song “Greyhound” by one of his favorite musicians, Harry Chapin.
“It’s got to be the going not the getting there that’s good,” Dolan said, quoting the song.
