The 2011 Graduating Class of College Univers
by Pam Mann

This year's graduating class was the first to have strong female volleyball players which may be why IU won the national high school girls' volleyball title this spring. Their top students have also been some of our best boys' soccer players, helping IU win the regional high school soccer title this year. One of their number won Ouanaminthe's first marathon in January 2011. Three of them have been awarded scholarships to study at U.S. universities. They have a few things to toot their horns about but mostly this is an infamous class.

After the January 12, 2010 earthquake, this class more than doubled in size, an increase greater than any other in the school. Previously the class had been the school's smallest, having had more of their classmates expelled each year over discipline problems than any other class. When they were in the 10th grade, every teacher complained about their unruly behavior. Even those who had to teach nearby them complained, so loud was the steady din of turbulence from their classroom.

At the Philo (13th grade) classroom tables which accommodate three students, one third seat students displaced by the earthquake, one third long-time Ouanaminthe residents and one third a mix of the two. This arrangement indicates to me that the class has fully integrated with some people making new friends more easily than others. Almost everyone has more people living in their house than its design intended. Almost everyone struggles to purchase basic necessities. Almost everyone dreams of a better situation: employment, running water, electricity, safe sewage, and basic health care.

The thirty-four students who graduated this June are foremost survivors, whether of the Port-au-Prince dust and rubble or of the IU disciplinary expulsions. They are going to have to continue as survivors, to cope with life in economically distressed Haiti.

They know how to laugh at themselves and take each other's kidding in stride. They have learned to organize themselves, even venturing first-time school service projects, like the American-Idol-style school-wide singing talent search and a Teacher Appreciation Day program which included subbing for every high school teacher for a one one-hour class. Yes, they may have demonstrated an unhealthy amount of senior-itis and a lethargic work ethic. They will probably produce no national scholar to boast of on their official exams but this is a class which knows how to laugh, how to take life's setbacks in stride and how to hang together in difficulty … important life skills for young men and women who face a difficult life.

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