In the shadow of the march and countermarch in Charlottesville, as well as the White House’s decision to roll back DACA, how do we, as Sequoia, want to be remembered? What does one of the most diverse student bodies in our neighboring districts want to say in response to the legal restrictions of our rights? Before a potential draft, how do we want to stop it? How do we want to be remembered?

Do we want to be remembered by Taylor Swift’s new album, or do we want to write our own songs? Do we want to be remembered by Game of Thrones merchandise, or to win our own game today? Do we want to be remembered for the Warriors’ historic championships, or our own? This year seemed to undermine the individual. We must reclaim ourselves.

2017 seems to be splitting the social and political chasm from sea to shining sea, compared to the world a hundred years ago. In a year where many of the same fears of entering a war, fighting in a war, fighting a racial war, and entering into a political war have appeared, how do we want to be remembered?

Our generation is capable of a whole lot of hate and ignorance, we see this plastered on social media, we hear it in crass language friends throw at one another from across the hallway. That’s the truth, plain and simple, that humans are capable of inciting unimaginable pain on one another, and this year has been an exemplary display of this. But what is hopeful to me is the amount of kindness and benevolence we are also capable of.

We can make our own future. We can change our own present. We can demand that we will be remembered as the generation that changed the world.

Malala Yousafzai, an individual all of our generation should be remembered for, said, “One child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change the world.” So it’s a damn good thing that we’re a school of 2100 students and over 500 staff.

We are dreamers who dream of a better future, students who will teach a better lesson than the one Charlottesville is writing in our name. We are teachers who educate the future, and writers who will speak out against hatred. We are a group who will not let others identify us, and individuals who will not be separated.

That’s what we should leave behind. That’s what we will leave behind: a legacy of compassion, activism and pride.