On January 6, 2017, Williston honored the academic achievements of 12 students from the class of 2017 by inducting them into the Cum Laude Society.

A national honors society, the Cum Laude Society takes after Phi Beta Kappa. The top 10 percent of students in the senior class receive this award. The next 10 percent will inducted during Commencement in May.

Presiding over the ceremony was Mr. Peter Gunn, who began the ceremony by explaining that cum laude “the highest academic award that the WNS faculty can bestow. In celebration of such academic excellence we celebrate our fundamental mission, to inspire students to live with academic purpose intellectual passion and personal integrity.”

Gunn briefly spoke to the three tenets of the Cum Laude society, excellence, justice, and honor. “In uncertain times,” Gunn said, “living according to these three tenets is of the utmost importance.” He continued, “Your effort matters… learning remains a fundamentally progressive, optimistic, and democratic enterprise. In you, we witness what can be accomplished with a wonderful mixture of human potential and hard work.”

Sima Gandevia, Jerry Gao, Jin Young Lee, Soma Mizobuchi, Tomasz Paluchowksi, Zach Robbins, Jordan Sansone, Shengfu Shen, Jiaying Tang, Anna Wilinsky, Emily Yeager, and Molly Zawacki were all inducted during this ceremony.

Mr. Peter Valine formally inducted the students, and in his congratulations, gave them a formal charge for the future.

“This society is a fellowship of students whose purpose it is to recognize excellence in academic work,” Valine said. He said he hopes the new inductees continue to “strive for similar excelling in all future endeavors, and along the way contribute to finding solutions to the major challenges facing your generation.”

The ceremony’s keynote speaker was Ann Sonnenfeld. A 1975 Williston graduate, Ms. Sonnenfeld went to graduate from Princeton in 1979, and a JD Summa Cum Laude from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1984. Sonnenfeld is a partner at Blank Rome LLP in Philadelphia; she has also been the chair of the Board of Trustees of Agnes Irwin School, an all-girls independent school in Rosemont, Pennsylvania, for six years.

Sonnenfeld spoke to the students both about her time at Williston as well as about her advice for the future.

“I recall more from my two years here [at Williston] than perhaps the ten years before that,” said Sonnefeld, who fondly remembers Grateful Dead playing out of dorm windows and laughing with her friends.

Sonnenfeld advised the Cum Laude inductees to “figure out who you are and try to like yourself.” She also encouraged the students to read and exercise in order to relax.

“I took a linear, determined path in life. I did not realize or consider that there were different paths or other options,” said Sonnenfeld. She told the students to always consider multiple paths in life before choosing one, and explained that when she was in high school, they “didn’t have the internet; people just never went to Machu Picchu or hiked the Appalachian trail, or took a gap year. We didn’t even know those things existed… I was so busy doing what I thought I should do that I didn’t consider what I wanted to do.”

The Cum Laude ceremony was followed by a reception for inductees, their families, and faculty members at Mr. Hill’s house.