and create community in this space. If you’re a white, affluent, Christian male, what voice do you have in this conversation? We want to hear everyone’s stories, and from there, to build a curriculum
and help our community see everybody’s experience as valid and unique.” “How do we prepare our students to enter a world and to work productively with people from a range of experi-
ences and backgrounds?” Pernell asks. “We want them to leave here ready to contribute to a society that is more diverse; that is our work while we’re here together at Nobles.” —KIM NEAL
A PLEA FOR IMMIGRATION REFORM In a June 2011 essay in The New York Times, Jose Antonio Vargas shared “My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant.” In June 2012, he was featured on the cover of Time magazine in “Not Legal, Not Leaving.” On April 27, 2016—just hours after consulting with the United Nations regarding immigration—Vargas shared his story with the Nobles community. “I am who I am today because of what happened when I was your age,” he told students in long assembly. Vargas framed his talk on immigration and the need for reform, explaining that in 1790, what was required for citizenship was being “free, white and of good moral character.” It wasn’t until 1924 that Native Americans were granted citizenship, he said, noting that ideas about and requirements for citizenship have changed over time. He asked the Nobles community to consider what a modern immigration system should look like. “Why do people move?” he queried. “Nothing is more human than the desire and necessity to move.” Vargas left the Philippines at age 12 to live with his grandparents in the San Francisco Bay area. At 16, a clerk at the DMV pronounced his green card a fake, and Vargas discovered his undocumented immigrant status. Vargas, who is gay, found himself in two closets, he said: “I had to get out of one closet.” Until the New York Times article, most friends and colleagues knew Vargas’s sexual identity—but nothing about his immigration status. After all, he had a fake social security card. He had even passed a screening by the Secret Service before interviewing the Japanese prime minister in the White House.
Before his second and more public coming out, Vargas had written for the New Yorker, the Washington Post, the Huffington Post and other prominent media. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his Washington Post coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings, and he profiled Mark Zuckerberg for the New Yorker. In preparation for the publication of his New York Times essay, he called the Department of Homeland Security and asked whether they planned to deport him. The response, Vargas said, was that Homeland Security declined to comJose ment on individual cases. Antonio During the Nobles assembly, Vargas offered Vargas information about immigration in the United States and sought to shift the popular narrative to a more accurate set of facts: The fastestgrowing group of undocumented immigrants is from China. Many immigrants pay taxes and have collectively contributed more than $1 billion to Social Security, and border crossings are at their lowest since the 1970s, he said. In Massachusetts alone, the Asian and Latino populations have doubled in the past 20 years. “I think that every country has the right to define and defend its borders,” he said, asking students and faculty to grapple with the complexity of the issue and recognize the need for a more factual, humane and nuanced understanding of the issues. Vargas asked the Nobles audience to be willing to be uncomfortable and talk about issues of race and class. In addition to his work as a journalist, he directed the documentary White People, and founded the nonprofit, Define American. “This is my life’s work now,” he said. —HEATHER SULLIVAN
ed Aidan Crawford
cross country, alpine
athletes. Duggan cap-
praised for her ability
Patriot’s Day
’16 and Amy Duggan
skiing and rowing, was
tained the volleyball,
to “buoy her team-
Patrick Murray ’16
ISL Excellence
’16 the ISL Excellence
recognized for setting
basketball and softball
mates” with her love of
received a standing
Awards
Award for multisport
the highest standard
teams to success with
the sport.
ovation as he was
The Independent
students. Crawford,
of sportsmanship and
devotion, selflessness
presented with a
School League award-
a standout athlete in
technique for younger
and optimism, and was
prestigious four-year
and orphanages.
FALL 2016 Nobles 9