GUEST: Top Newark student says time to speak is now
Today’s guest blog was written by Jordan Thomas, a senior at Newark’s University High School where he is valedictorian and earned a 4.5 GPA. He was admitted to Princeton, Harvard, Yale, and Rutgers and will attend Princeton in the fall. He plans to go to law school and become a Constitutional lawyer. He was the student member of the Newark School Advisory Board for this school year. He delivered these remarks at Tuesday night’s board meeting.
“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
This passage, derived from our nation’s founding text, the Declaration of Independence, details an individual’s natural propensity to tolerate, or, in some cases, suffer, rather than to excite disruption, engage in public denunciation, or demand absolute reformation in times of hardship and deficient leadership. Candidly, I admit that I have been one so guilty of remaining reserved and civil in both action and speech through the duration of the struggle that has occurred in the Newark Public Schools system these months past, blinded by a false sense of hope, a chimerical sense of promise, and a foolish belief that my words and GUEST: Top Newark student says time to speak is now | Bob Braun's Ledger: