An Honourable and an Inspiring Symposium

From Kevin Mahoney

It has certainly been an honor tonight to not only observe and watch the School Board meeting in which I have done in the past, but especially that of standing before the School Board and holding up the Brown flag before the WCCUSD School Board. I am truly gracious that the School Board has been so supportive of the Ivy league Connection ever since its establishment as a summer enrichment program at Dartmouth College, with special thanks to Board members Madeline Kronenberg and Charles Ramsey for establishing this program as well as the sponsors, many of whom were consistent donors, for having hope and assisting programs like ours. I would also like to thank Don Gosney for managing and putting up with the ILC and all its logistics and attributes where he is consistently making sure that much of the work that is needed to be done gets done and I will fully acknowledge that I and many other ILCers can never repay what he has done for such an important program to thrive so that a positive impact on our immediate and larger communities can occur.

Although my heart rate jumped up several beats per second while standing before the Board even though I didn't have to speak, (By the way, Jack, my fellow companion who is also studying Macroeconomics, and Alana, our lovely chaperone, gave such wonderful and insightful speeches; kudos to these two!) the most climatic part of the evening was hearing what other students and chaperones had to say. Although some of the speeches have had considerable amount of platitudes; seeing how some of these teenagers have changed and stepped up to the plate through fruitful delineation inspired me to make great use of this opportunity for not only my self relish and enlightenment but that of impacting others who want change to happen but are unsure how, previous alumni of the ILC, those who applied to the ILC but didn't get accepted, our respective leaders and bureaucrats in educational and municipal groups, as well as many others who greatly yearn for new insight and further progress and advancement in our community.

 On a less abysmal note, the picture taken by Don was incredibly interesting; it was quite an enigma on how I made a silly mistake to line up in the queue that I was instructed not to be in. The delicate velvety cloth underneath us as well as the cloth on the chairs on the middle row was moved considerably due to squirm-like demeanor from parents and students alike which I regret may have extended the recess session of the meeting. Anyhow, the picture was taken successfully (indicated by Don when he stopped taking pictures for one iconic published picture out of 30 shots, I guess a 3.33% chance one of those pictures will be used sounds like a high probability!) and we were dismissed but required to go outside to speak as the meeting was to resume shortly. It was also very joyous for me to see all but one of the Ivy League Connection members in one building (the lone ILCer, who is also a dear friend of mine, is at the Intel International Science Fair) as it led to me meeting many new people as well as feeling a warm and buzzing feeling of determination and gratitude. That said, I hope for a wonderful time and a successful year for the ILC and that in which El Cerrito's Portola Middle School will finally be renamed to Fred Korematsu Middle School as to reflect a more relevant name after an often unknown and poorly recognized individual who stood up against the US government to challenge Executive Order 9066. I am still watching the School Board meeting while scrambling to complete a post-AP Calculus BC Exam project on group theory and Baye's Theorem.