Students and their immediate families enjoyed speeches by La Vina Lowery and Than Healy, as well as by Student Body Co-Presidents Melanie Goldberg and Arman Shah. Chorus members performed “A Whole New World,” while the faculty steel pan band, complete with cowbell, played a festive number to mark the eighth graders’ triumphant moment.

Both the hardships of the pandemic and the eighth grade class’s resilience in overcoming them were prominent themes in the speakers’ remarks.

“Menlo is about much more than our beautiful school buildings,” La Vina said, acknowledging the disruptions the pandemic has yielded for the on-campus experience. “Menlo is about our community and the connections we have with each other. And I am so glad you will start your high school experience having both.”

Than celebrated the talents, both collective and individual, of the class, saying, “One of you has played the piano upside down and backward. Another is a really great graphic artist. One of you managed to squish their body in a super small space during a game of Advocacy hide-and-seek, to the delight of your classmates and relief of your advocate when you were able to also extract yourself. You are incredible artists, singers, actors, and dancers. You’ve won accolades at robotics and speech and debate competitions … A bunch of you showed yourselves to be amazing drummers who created bucket drum-sets at home, played a steel pan on an iPad, and then seamlessly transferred those skills to the real thing once you returned to campus. And you sang and learned harmonies in the quietness of your own homes and then recorded your voices so they could be blended together through a mixing program by a talented member of this class.”

But the story of the class of 2025, he said, is not merely that of its 73 individual students: “The true story of this class, a story made more pronounced by spending nearly half your middle school experience under the shadow of a global pandemic, is one of a group of former strangers who leave the middle school as a remarkable, resilient, and supportive community.”

Than also paid tribute to the unique character of the class: a group that could seem as close and loving as squabbling siblings, with one clear defining characteristic: “In this class, no one gets left behind.” He described our rising ninth graders as deeply committed to inclusion, belonging, and community.

Congratulations, Class of 2025, and welcome to the Upper School!