From The Blue Jay, Vol. 86, No. 1, Back to School 2013

By Christopher Dupre, The Blue Jay Guest columnist

Our director of student activities, Mr. Matt Orillion, challenged our incoming students at investiture to embrace three pillars for this year: involvement, support and leadership.

Every year, the student body is given the opportunity to leave its mark on Jesuit High School forever. By embracing these three pillars, we will continue to do so.

Involvement

You have a choice to be simply a Jesuit student or to be fully involved as a Blue Jay. Part of the Jesuit experience is that you find your niche, your passion, in the Jesuit community. There is something in this community that will kindle your heart. And by getting involved you contribute to the tradition of Jesuit High School and share in the passion that has coursed through the veins of Blue Jays for a century and a half.

You become something bigger than yourself. What you put in is what you get out of the Jesuit experience. Look around you. See the bricks. The love and support of Blue Jays before us built this school. Look around you. Some of your best friends are here today because Blue Jays of the past embraced the Blue Jay spirit. The more you put into this school the more Jesuit become a part of you.

Support

With involvement comes support. Not just under the lights of Tad Gormley on Friday nights cheering with 3,000 others. That’s easy. It’s also filling the Birdcage on a Wednesday night for a basketball game or a wrestling meet. It’s attending the plays put on by the Philelectic Society. But, more importantly, it’s the little things every day that we can do with great love for each other. It’s paying for lunch one day for the friend who can’t afford it. It’s helping a classmate with a subject he is having difficulty understanding. It’s the small loving acts that we do with joy charity and service that fly under the radar that define Blue Jay spirit.

Leadership

You do not have to be the captain of a team or the Student Council president to be a leader. Each and every one of us is called to be a leader in our organizations, among our group of friends, in our families. Leadership is doing what is right even when no one is watching. It is going beyond your comfort zone to make a difference. Being a leader is someone who isn’t a follower defined by others but someone who blazes his own trails and defines himself.

These three pillars are our goals for this year as a student body. Together, if we embrace these pillars, we can lay claim to the old Blue Jay spirit that captivated young men of the past.