Konuşma

Don't Let Them Silence Our Clubs

Ladies and gentlemen, fellow students,1 imagine walking into this school next September and finding the music room locked, the drama club gone, the football pitch silent and empty.2 That is not a nightmare. That is the plan sitting on a table right now.

We are the students of this school, and these clubs belong to us.3 They are where I found my closest friends. They are where many of you first discovered what you truly love — a sport, a song, a stage, a team. So I have to ask you today: are we really willing to let all of that disappear without a fight?4

And the numbers are on our side. Students who join clubs attend more often, achieve higher grades and, yes, smile more.5 A school is not only its exam results. It is the choir practising after the last bell, the team running in the rain, the friendships built in a corner of a classroom that no timetable planned. Cutting these clubs will not save money in the long run — it will cost us something no budget can ever measure.

So I ask you today to stand up. Stand up for the shy first-year who finally belongs somewhere. Stand up for the friend who comes alive on the stage. Stand up for every student who deserves more from school than a timetable.6

Together, our voices are far too loud to ignore. Sign the petition, come to the meeting on Friday, and let us tell them clearly and calmly: these clubs are worth saving. Thank you.7

The Courage to Be Kind

Distinguished guests, teachers, and above all, my fellow young people1 — I want to begin with a confession. Not long ago, I watched a stranger be torn apart online, and I said nothing. I told myself it was none of my business. I was wrong, and tonight I want to talk about why.2 It was a small thing, perhaps: one person, one quiet evening, one laptop I chose to close. But small silences, multiplied by millions of us, are exactly how cruelty wins.

We live in the most connected era in human history. We can reach a million people before breakfast. We can befriend a stranger on the other side of the planet. But let me ask you something honestly: have we ever been crueller?3 Behind every username is a person — a person with a mother, a bad day, a breaking point. When we forget that, we do not just wound them. We all lose a little of ourselves.4

And the evidence is impossible to ignore. Studies show that one in three young people has faced harassment online, and its shadow follows them out of the screen and into classrooms, bedrooms and dreams.5 These are not statistics. These are our friends. These are, perhaps, some of us sitting quietly in this very room, hoping no one can tell.

I know how that feels from the other side, too. Two years ago, a single unkind comment beneath something I had posted kept me awake for a whole week. I read it until I had memorised it. And I remember thinking: if one sentence from one stranger could do this to me, what on earth are we doing to each other, a thousand comments at a time?

So I am not here to ask you to be perfect. I am here to ask you to be brave. Brave enough to defend a stranger. Brave enough to walk away from an argument. Brave enough to be the one kind voice in a cruel thread.6

Some will call this naive. They will say the internet has always been this way and always will be, that outrage is simply what the machines were built to sell us.7 But every act of decency in history was once dismissed as naive — the first person to defend the unpopular, the first to speak up when it was easier to stay quiet — until enough people simply refused to look away. Kindness is not weakness. It is not softness. It is the hardest, bravest thing we can offer one another.

So tonight, I ask you to make one promise. The next time you see cruelty, do not scroll past. Type the kind word. Report the cruel one. Be the reason a stranger feels a little less alone. If we do that — all of us, together — we will not just change the internet. We will change each other. Thank you.8