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The echoing values of the Scotch College voice

The elusive ‘Scotch spirit’ promotes ideals of mateship, camaraderie, unity and community, while encouraging individuality and independence.

At the beginning of every school year there is an inevitable shift as one student cohort changes to another – a fluctuation that alters the chemistry of the school’s make-up, if you will. The young, excited new boys are welcomed and the adult, experienced old boys are given a heartfelt farewell.

This intake of new students brings with it a great deal: new talent, new ideas and new voices – welcome ingredients to the overall family that is the Scotch College student body. Additionally, as a result of the intake of new Scotch Collegians, the tone and character of the ‘student voice’ of the school (the communicated values and ideas of the student body at large) is redefined into something unique every year; something completely different from the years preceding it.

In 2010, the voice of the Scotch College student body boasts a multitude of positive attributes. It is a voice filled with questions, a voice filled with creative thoughts and inspiration, a voice characterised by many motivations, feelings and opinions. It is a voice that has developed a distinctiveness with each of the new boys who have begun a journey at Scotch College. But most of all, it is a voice that is rich with individuality, and this is its greatest and most remarkable quality.

The student bodies which have passed through the years in Scotch College’s history, I am sure, have each had a different quality, feeling or atmosphere – whether they were defined by the attitudes of a generation or the events that took place around them at the time. Whatever the case, the voice of each year at Scotch College would have had a different quality, a different tone and a different edge.

Yet, in among this – as I have found through my own experience and through stories from others – there remains a happy consistency among the students’ values and ideals year after year. The student cohort of Scotch College, despite its yearly fluctuations, offers a certain reliability, and has always emanated a core set of values. In my belief this is largely due to that wonderfully omnipresent ‘Scotch spirit’.

It is hard to determine exactly how the school spirit affects the student voice over time, but what can be said is that this spirit certainly is something very real to many, and it can certainly be sensed by all boys – past and present. It is this spirit that, I believe, provides the basic consistency in the style of voice that the Scotch College student bodies have possessed. It promotes ideals of mateship, camaraderie, unity and community, while encouraging individuality and independence among a large group.

However, the Scotch spirit still remains something that is, largely, difficult to pinpoint, classify, identify or, indeed, even explain through a Great Scot article! To be understood, what it really needs is to be felt – this is the only means by which it can properly be appreciated. Even after my (nearly!) 14 years at the school I struggle to define ‘Scotch spirit’. And it was not until one night earlier this year that I came to grasp the notion of ‘Scotch spirit’ a little better.

On Wednesday 9 June the OSCA (Old Scotch Collegians’ Association) dinner was held at Leonda. This night will forever stick with me as one of the most significant evenings in my time at this school.

With immense pride I looked out that evening on a large throng of Old Scotch Collegians (some 550 plus). Every one of the Old Boys, from the most venerable – Sir Archibald Glenn, Class of 1929 – to the youngest boys from the class of 2009 showed me something. To me, this is the truly defining characteristic of Scotch boys – past and present. It is not something that can be bought. It is not something that is merely acquired. But rather, it is something that has been passionately fashioned together, although subconsciously, over time: the spirit of our great school. It is a flame that burns ever eternal and bonds us together always.

This is the consistency that lingers in the voice of the Scotch College student body year after year: the Scotch College spirit – that passionate, encompassing feeling that resonates with all the boys; echoing the voices of the student body and the many boys (and voices) who have gone before. This drives each year’s voice to hold a similar set of positive values and ideals, leaving a voice that is still unique in quality but also proud with echoes of the past.

School Captain Jack Fowles with his brothers (from left) Jim ('99), Matt ('98) and Will ('96) at the OSCA Annual Dinner

It is the voice that says ‘be a good mate to the new boy’, ‘pursue your passions to their full extent’ and ‘strive for your own personal measures of success not the measures of others’. It is the voice that says ‘compete for the love of the game, not the love of the win’. It is the voice that says ‘be genuine, respectful and a good bloke’. It is the voice that says ‘stay true to yourself but never forget those who’ve shaped you’. It is the voice that says ‘you can make a difference if you believe in it’, ‘you can reach your goals with enough effort’. It is the voice that says ‘your good fortune in life is an opportunity to do good for others; to give back; to engage’. It is the voice that says ‘mate, you’re a Scotch Collegian’. GS

Updated: Monday 24 June 2013