Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration

1/19/2010

The awards were the highlight of a program billed as “a celebration of our personal lights and of the power of one” and featuring readings and music performed by faculty, staff, and students.

Boll, who lives in Winchester, is the parent of three Fenn alumni, Ian, Alex, and Cam, and “first came to know and love this school as she saw what it did for her own sons and their schoolmates,” Ward said before presenting her with an award. Ten years ago Boll chaired the Trustee Committee on Diversity “that created the road map for Fenn’s current diversity program,” he added.

Ward praised Boll for “her devotion to Fenn, her vision of a broad and ever-evolving education for Fenn boys and of an ever-more diverse School by many measures, her artist’s creative vision of inclusiveness and equity, and her generosity in promoting a better world.” Boll, he added, “promotes and invests in the causes of education, fairness, diversity, and justice.”

Beyond her work as a trustee since 1998, Boll is an artist and filmmaker who won an Academy Award in 2005 for producing the documentary Born Into Brothels. The film portrays the lives of a small group of children of prostitutes in Calcutta who are given cameras to document their lives by a photographer determined to raise them up from the squalor in which they live. Most recently she directed the documentary Who Does She Think She Is?, which explores the lives of women as parents and professionals, and the inherent challenge in blending both worlds.

McMahon, a Lincoln resident and Lower School teacher for more than two decades before her retirement last spring, was honored for her diversity work at Fenn. Her own interest in this issue led MacMahon to South Africa several years ago, where she met Helen Suzman, a tireless fighter against apartheid who died last year. “Polite, patient, and thoughtful,” MacMahon nevertheless “stated her opinions clearly,” Cobblah said, presenting her with the medal. Her contributions to “important proposals and initiatives,” he added, “have been invaluable to the School.”

Ward received his award from Boll, who said the Headmaster “has helped to create a school where boys feel safe to risk new behaviors, try out new skills, and express emotions typically forbidden in ‘boys’ cultures,’ such as an enthusiasm for the arts, heartfelt friendships, and demonstrative affection for their classmates and teachers…These are good things.”

 

Ward is “curious and interested in students’ lives, she added, “their studies, and their sports, and by this attention, he shows the deep respect that is at the heart of diversity work.”

The Assembly closed with a spirited rendition of “Light One Candle,” with the boys holding aloft tiny LED candles in a darkened Robb Hall.