Awards 2008

Administration

Awards Awards

CHRISTIAN RUGGIERO ARCHBISHOP’S PRIZE FOR CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP Swing Band I (Outstanding Contribution)

MATTHEW COWIE OLD BOYS’ PRIZE For the boy (other than the Head Prefect) most outstanding for Leadership, Loyalty and Service

THOMAS DRAGE DUX OF COLLEGE (Digby Fitzhardinge Memorial Prize) Applicable Mathematics Calculus Information Systems Physics

JOSHUA SOMERS PROXIME ACCESSIT Chemistry English 3A/3B (Eileen Lane Award)

JOSHUA HICKS HEAD PREFECT (The Christian Brothers’ Medal) JP ILICH AWARD For Outstanding Service to the College in Sport Economics English Literature (Peter Henfry Memorial Prize) Athletics Open Champion Cross Country – Senior School

TRAVIS COLYER JP ILICH AWARD For Outstanding Service to the College in Sport Physical Education Studies 3A/3B Cricket – 1st XI

JACOB LYNCH EDMUND RICE AWARD FOR RELIGIOUS EDUCATION Engineering Studies 3A/3B

ALEXANDER MALKOVIC SIGNUM FIDEI ART AWARD Art

Presentation Night – Valedictory Address

Good evening Mr Banks, special guests, ladies and gentlemen.

It is certainly an honour for me to be addressing you tonight. It has also been an honour to be a part of a school like Trinity. A school that readies us for an everchanging world.

Joshua Hicks Head Prefect 2008 I can’t help but notice how much the world is changing. For example, there is, for the first time ever, a black nominee for President of the United States. His nomination was announced forty-four years after another influential man, Martin Luther King Jr, dreamed of a world where it is not the colour of your skin that matters, but the content of your character. The US election is just one example of how we are fast approaching that new world. For myself, I see this year as a turning point. I see this year as a historical one, where America will have a black President. This year marks, in my mind at least, a divider in the pages of history.

This is where Trinity comes in. We have finally reached the point where it isn’t the colour of your skin, or your social status, or the number of A grades you get that matters. What matters now is the calibre of your character. It’s not what you are, but who you are that now counts. The values that Trinity espouses in us all demands that we answer this question: what side of history do we want to be on? Do we want the chance to let our character determine our destiny? Or do we want to be defined by that which is out of our control, our gender, race, wealth, status. In other words, will we embrace the future with hope, or will we cling to the threads of a comfortable past, fearing what changes the future may bring? Trinity has given us the opportunity to choose hope over fear. To choose character over colour as it were. Without Trinity, and the opportunities it affords its students, there would be fewer people in the world willing to hope for a future where you are measured by the strength of your character. Without Trinity there would be fewer people in the world striving manfully, being ‘Men for Others’, living In Nomine Domini. However Trinity, and schools like it, exist, thus we believe in a future of hope.

In the few years in which I’ve been lucky enough to be a part of Trinity, we’ve seen so much hope. There has been a Doctor of Music who hoped to take his chorale on a tour of China. There has been a teacher who hoped to carry on the legacy of the Christian Brothers in the wake of their departure from the school. Not only was there hope, but people acted on their hope.

Presentation Night