Message from Head of School
Dear Members of the Ransom Everglades Community,
Throughout the weekend and all day yesterday, I mulled over what I should write to our community about this tragic time in our nation’s history. The death of George Floyd in Minneapolis at the hands of white police officers and the deeply lodged pain of unrealized dreams that it has unleashed have shaken the very foundation of our society. I am shaken. I have watched the news in horror; I have read newspapers; I have read letters written by university presidents. What has guided me most in formulating this letter, however, are the messages that have been pouring into my office from you.
This is a time of existential challenge for our country – for the United States of America – and judging by what you have written to me, you agree. Your observations and proposals cover a spectrum of possibilities, but most have one thing in common: the need for real action. People around the nation and within our own community are grieving and are exasperated. We are feeling vulnerable. Your belief that we must do better has reverberated.
We have all benefited from an excellent education, whether as students ourselves or by being part of an institution like Ransom Everglades. Somewhere along the way, we studied the historical roots of social injustice and racial prejudice, and we are familiar with the theories and efforts advanced to address those issues.
The patience of those of you who have written to me and of my colleagues who have spoken with me has worn thin. As has mine. There is little appetite for more theories or more reading. Positive social change is called for, and you have expressed an eagerness to bring it about in practical, peaceful and enduring ways.
Many of the letters I have read include statements from schools about the need to reaffirm their values. Anyone who has sat in the Dell on the Everglades Campus or passed through the breezeway on the Ransom Campus can recite the values we hold sacred: to create tomorrow’s leaders who will put more into the world than they take from it. You can take pride in the fact that the Ransom Everglades community is prepared to act on its values, to be in that third class of people that Paul Ransom first accepted into his school 117 years ago.
This is our Paul Ransom moment. School is out for the summer, and sadly we cannot gather on campus to chart the course together. But we can use what we have been taught and set about to make America the kind of country it must be: the equitable, inclusive and democratic nation where each and every individual is valued and treated with dignity and respect.
I am here to listen. The faculty, staff and administration are also here to listen. We will be working this summer to strengthen our resolve and our commitment to DEI: diversity, equity and inclusion. We will redouble our efforts to make certain that every Ransom Everglades student will fully comprehend the realities of injustice in our nation, and that they will be hardwired to effect positive change.
The best time to teach empathy is when we ourselves are vulnerable. That time is now.
Together we will help however we can, and we have faith that we can and will do better. And we have faith in you.
Words alone are never enough.
Penny Townsend
Head of School
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Middle School
2045 South Bayshore Drive, Coconut Grove, FL 33133Phone: 305 250 6850
Upper School
3575 Main Highway, Coconut Grove, FL 33133Phone: 305 460 8800
Founded in 1903, Ransom Everglades School is a coeducational, college preparatory day school for grades 6 - 12 located on two campuses in Coconut Grove, Florida. Ransom Everglades School produces graduates who "believe that they are in the world not so much for what they can get out of it as for what they can put into it." The school provides rigorous college preparation that promotes the student's sense of identity, community, personal integrity and values for a productive and satisfying life, and prepares the student to lead and to contribute to society.