It was a Monday morning in June a few years back. I was commuting at the time from Belfast to Bangor, and as I hurried north on my familiar route, I spotted some fresh graffiti on the back of a sign. Then on the next sign. And the next.
On each sign were the letters “MV.”
It took me a few moments to ascertain the meaning of the two letters—hey, it was a Monday morning—but soon it was plain. “MV” referred to Mount View, the name of the high school in western Waldo County, part of the SAD 3 system. The school had graduated its senior class the day before, I realized.
In the course of my travels around Waldo County in the coming weeks, I saw those two letters on a surprising number of signs, in a surprising number of places.
It wasn’t hard to imagine the crime. Sometime after midnight, probably, a few guys in a car or pickup, hooting and hollering their way around the county. Maybe some beer was involved. It certainly wasn’t an original expression of class pride. Where I grew up, if memory serves, people would spray-paint their graduating class year high on the town water tower.
The act of vandalism didn’t offend me so much as it made me sad. What, I wondered, drove them to risk the legal trouble they would face if they got caught? Was there really a sense of triumph or defiance in literally leaving their mark on the world in this way? Why were they so proud of that achievement, graduating high school? Or was it some sentimental fondness for their high school—a regional one in the middle of an old cow pasture, drawing from 11 very rural towns—expressed in those boldly painted letters?
I was reminded of this recently when I became immersed in high school graduation matters. There was a luncheon for the 74 island students who received post-secondary scholarships through the Island Institute.
And I chatted by telephone with some island guidance counselors about where island students are headed for the next step in their education.
Some of the island trends track with other parts of Maine. More students are planning a couple of years at a community college, knocking off credits at a lower cost, before transferring to a university or college. Among the 74 island scholarship winners, about 15 were headed to Maine state colleges or universities.
Cindy Gorham, the librarian and senior advisor at Islesboro Central School, said three of the school’s seven graduates who are planning further education are staying in state.
“I find kids start out saying they don’t want to go to Maine schools,” she said. “They feel like their options are wide open until they do the financial aid part.” Then sticker shock sets in.
One graduate began working at the island’s veterinary clinic, a job that began through the school’s community service requirement. Another student is bound for cosmetology school in Augusta.
Gorham, like many other educators, believes vocational and technical options ought to be pushed. There’s a national skills gap, she said. Just two Islesboro grads in the last five years went to Maine Maritime Academy, a likely place for islanders to get marketable skills, and only one finished.
Unlike their rural, mainland counterparts, some islanders are headed off to pretty prestigious—and pricey—institutions. Scholarship winners are going to schools like Bowdoin, Brown, George Washington, Skidmore, Case-Western and Boston College, reflecting the value their parents place on education and, to some degree, the resources they have to devote to that education.
The two graduates from North Haven Community School reveal two contrary forces, said Jen Cabot, the school guidance counselor. One is off to La Salle University in Philadelphia, the other one will fish. Private colleges, even the ivy-covered kind, are attainable for students there, Cabot said, because as much as $7,000 in scholarship money is available for them.
“But there’s kind of a pull to stay here fishing,” she said. “They’ve done the math,” comparing what college-educated teachers earn vs. what they might make lobstering. Cabot works to have students consider what might happen if the bottom falls out of the lobster fishery.
Gorham said Islesboro graduates may leave, but hope to return.
“The trend that I’ve seen more and more is that they want to come back,” she said.
Back to those “MV” kids.
Was I guilty of stereotyping their plight? Did I assume their school pride reflected a sad—for me, anyway—truth, that they somehow knew they’d climbed the education tree as high as they could? Was I seeing the graffiti as an indulgent, last hurrah before settling into lives that would isolate them from each other and from the wider world?
Learning what island students face has me seeing things differently. The attachment to place, to the known, is powerful. And it carries with it laudable values, such as giving back to one’s community, loyalty to family and friends, choosing to put down roots in what is, of course, a glorious though challenging place to live.
Yet above all, we want to be pro-choice. We want our grads to have options, whether it’s college, vocational training or starting a business.
We want them to succeed in high school, and for their experience there to give them the skills and confidence to take a next step. What we don’t want, and what I worry the “MV” graffiti signified, was that the initials of their high school becomes an epitaph, an identity that coincides with a peak in life.
The other side of that coin is that even with a post-graduate degree from an Ivy League college, there’s so much to learn and so much life to come. For those “MV” guys, I hope those letters fade from their lives faster than they have on the road signs.
Tom Groening is editor of The Working Waterfront.