A community is a group of people with a shared background, and with shared interests and goals, and it is the distinct challenge of every class to define for themselves what kind of excellence they will pursue. Here at Xavier we pride ourselves on our school community. Junior transfer student Brandon Ledyard believes one of the good things about our school is that we focus on extracurricular and athletics more than his old school, and of course as a Catholic school we value faith as an integral part of our identity. Our focus on athletics and extracurricular activities in addition to education works to develop the entirety of the student and, as Brother James Kelly eloquently put it, “build men who matter.”

Because of our focus on building men who matter, many of our alumni go off and do great things in the world, and many of our current students are doing great things while still in school. But what about the culture between students?                                                                                                

While we are a community in that we all attend the same school, how much do you really know about your classmates, with whom you’ll spend around 4,300 hours with before you graduate? Mr. Garrity put it most simply one day in class last year, when he said: outside of your immediate group of friends “You don’t know the first thing about each other”. SAC has taken some steps to address this, most visibly the new arrangement of the tables in the dining hall. But a student organization will inevitably have difficulty when addressing something like this, because  real change can only be enacted through individuals. By doing things such as sitting at a new table during lunch, or organizing a study group including people outside your immediate group of friends, you make yourself part of a real school community. The solution to this intangible problem is very simple: be even friendlier, try new things, put yourself out there. By doing this you learn new things, meet new people, and create, in your short time here, a sense of community that will remain with you for the rest of your life.