It’s easy to celebrate success. We admire those who achieve, we admire those who persevere, and we admire those who reach the top. But those who stand up for what they believe in? It sure doesn’t come with laudation or silverware. More often than not, it comes with pushback, protest, or even failure. And yet, that is where real courage and integrity live – not in the moments where everything is certain, but in the moments where you don’t know how things will turn out.
We hear it all the time: “Stand up for what’s right. Speak your mind. Take action.” But saying it is one thing, actualising it is another. It’s simple to make a statement when everyone around you agrees – to hear your own voice in an echo chamber. It’s far harder when you are the only voice in the room, when speaking up could cost you something – approval, contentment, sanctuary.
Yet despite this, speaking up for what is right – on a constant and meaningful matter – is the very thing that makes us a ‘virtuous human’; a human who develops their qualities and strives for excellence in the sense that they persist through hardships and challenges to ensure the success of a notion or movement that they believe, that they know, is right.
Melbourne Grammar School has seen people do exactly that: students, teachers, and Old Melburnians alike. These people took a stand when it mattered “not because it was easy, but because it was hard.” Those hard actions, whilst difficult in the moment, enrich our appreciation for the deep roots of institutionalisation within our world: when significant enough, they are integral, because once a decision is implemented in our society, it is bound to be present until a social catalyst unturns or alters its presence.
From the past…
Recently, I was browsing the honour boards hung high in The Old Melburnians War Memorial Hall, looking at past Captains and Academic Heads of School. Curiosity got the better of me and I decided to look up some of the names and see where these Old Melburnians now stood in life. Never had I been so proud to go to this School.
Amongst them were many brilliant, gifted minds. There were past students making real, justified changes within our world; people who current students can look up to through their demonstration of what changes we are capable of making in the future.
… to the future
This awe-inspiring sight left me feeling a certain obligation, an acknowledgement for a newfound passion to somehow repay a world that has given me so much. And this isn’t just about history or the people who came before us. It’s about now. It’s about the moments we face every day in a contemporary environment – from the student who takes a stand against injustice on the sports field, to the friend who stands against their own friends when hearing a pejorative comment, and to the Old Melburnian who fights for equity and equality within our community.
Fighting for what we believe defines us. It shapes the kind of people we become and the type of community we create. If we stand by as passive participants in a world that rapidly grows more and more polarising – creating division and fractionalisation – then we are willingly accepting our fate. Such inaction says that we are okay with a divided world, a world where tough questions cannot be answered and a world where only certain individuals have the ability to speak their mind.
It is because of this – this appreciation that our society is ever changing – that Melbourne Grammar teaches us that we have a voice, that we have the ability to stand up for what is right and that our community will support us until the very end. And for that, my peers and I will be eternally grateful.
Henry Flintoft
2025 Captain of the School
