BYFIELD — The 260th commencement ceremony at The Governor’s Academy saw diplomas awarded to 103 graduates Sunday.
After receiving their diplomas from Head of School Peter Quimby and board of trustees President James Pierce, the graduates followed faculty members to the Little Red Schoolhouse to say “goodbye for now.”
They then walked to Mansion House together to literally take a metaphoric leap into the next chapter of their lives.
The jumping of the wall – when graduates jump over the stone wall behind the Mansion House – has been a tradition for graduating classes since the 1950s, according to the school.
Giving the commencement address was Shabana Basij-Rasikh, an Afghan educator, humanitarian and women’s rights champion who co-founded the School of Leadership Afghanistan, or SOLA.
Basij-Rasikh, who was just named National Geographic Society’s Explorer of the Year, was born and raised in Kabul, Afghanistan, under Taliban rule. She first attended a secret school dressed as a boy and later attended public school only after the Taliban’s fall in 2001.
SOLA opened its doors in Kabul to 24 girls in 2016 with the goal of creating a safe environment where girls could learn from educated women and build the bonds of sisterhood, according to Governor’s.
In August 2021, when the Taliban returned to power, SOLA’s school community, including its student body of more than 100 students, evacuated Kabul and resumed its rigorous educational program in Rwanda, where it continues to expand. SOLA is giving girls from Afghanistan a chance to receive the education that the Taliban has denied them.
In her address to graduates, Basij-Rasikh said, “I believe in the power of education to transform lives and to transform society.”
She connected her work to Governor’s celebration of 50 years of women at the school when she said, “You are the inheritors of 50 years of hope, 50 years of an unshakeable belief in human equality, just the same way that I am the inheritor of a spirit of hope and bravery that has been passed down through generations of Afghan women.”
The processional was led by the two members of the Class of 2023 who received awards voted on by Governor’s entire faculty. Judy Wang of Braintree was awarded the Morse Flag, presented each year “to a senior whose record in all respects meets the highest approval of the faculty.”
Hanna Freund of Winchester won the Academy Prize, which is “awarded to a senior whose unselfishness and sportsmanship have best exemplified the spirit of the school.”