One of the highlights of every spring on campus is the Asian Night Market—a vibrant, schoolwide celebration on the Main Quad where students cook and share favorite dishes, from Japanese yakisoba to Korean bulgogi to Vietnamese spring rolls. The tradition began just four years ago, when members of the Asian Alliance Club proposed the idea to their advisor, Ken Choo. With Ken’s encouragement, they launched the first event. Now it’s hard to imagine a Williston spring without it.
This kind of student-driven initiative is exactly what you’d expect from a school whose unofficial motto is “Be yourself here.” When students feel supported and encouraged to be themselves, it frees them to take risks—the good kind—and to pursue ideas and passions that are uniquely their own. I see it all the time: when a Williston Scholar presents original research with infectious enthusiasm, or when a student leads a personal workshop during Why Not Speak Day. Or, as you’ll read on page 13, when a group of seniors set out to establish an endowed fund in honor of a late classmate—and made it happen.
When I reflect on why students feel empowered to be themselves at Williston, it always comes back to the people—particularly the teachers, coaches, advisors, and staff who invest time and individualized care into each student. Sometimes that means helping a student reach a long-held goal. Other times, it involves gently nudging a student to try something beyond their comfort zone, like running for class president or auditioning for the play. And sometimes, it’s simply saying, “Yes—go for it,” as Ken Choo did with students in the Asian Alliance Club and the Night Market. As one alumnus recently shared with me, “I’ve never had people as invested in me personally as they were at Williston.”
A perfect example of that kind of investment appears in the story on page 46, about longtime faculty member Ed Hing ’77, who will retire this June. Ed arrived at Williston with an interest in photography, but his passion truly took flight under the mentorship of then-photography teacher Bob Couch ’50. Couchie, as he’s widely known, gave Ed the key to the darkroom and helped him secure a photography internship. More importantly, he encouraged Ed to pursue what he loved. “Couchie believed in me,” Ed recalls. “That was huge.” In a full-circle moment, when Couchie retired, Ed returned to Williston to take over the photography program, where he has since mentored hundreds of aspiring artists over the past 28 years.
When students are supported in the ways our faculty and staff make possible, they end up leaving Williston with belief in their ideas and the experience of having done something meaningful. These moments matter—and they begin with a simple but powerful invitation:
Be yourself here.