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It’s a shame about Ray

I learnt yesterday that my old school principal, Ray Willis, died this week. He was young—in his mid-fifties. The funeral was today, apparently.

I can’t say that I was greatly moved when I heard the news. I only consider my alma mater when it comes up in conversation, and usually what follows is an unbridled litany of disgust. Melbourne High School has deeply ingrained pretensions to grandeur. It has for decades attempted what I regard a dangerous enterprise: instilling in batches of young men a potent and unwarranted sense of elitism—of difference and above all superiority, on the basis of slender evidence and a full-body massaging of the facts. Arrogance in individuals is natural and, as I think I have written here, is often a net good. But arrogance in groups just causes deafness, and when I recall how we thought about the world looking out from the faux-castellian facade of the “old building”, I think we were all a bit deaf. I still consider myself somewhat hard of hearing today.

It seems a relatively minor criticism to make, doesn’t it? Hardly enough to provoke bitter litanies. I guess that’s true, and I should do more to recall the good that place did me. But I also think I can only convey the ramifications of an “us and them” culture to someone whose experienced it to some degree. Melbourne High School is where I learnt to sneer, and unrelenting distaste was the mainstay of all our discussions as students. I’ve said of a number of my old classmates that they were genuinely nice blokes in a one-on-one conversation, but in a crowd of three or more, they turned from Jekylls to Hydes. One wolf is just an undomesticated dog, but a pack will tear you to bloody shreds. The same could probably be said of me back then, and I don’t doubt there are vestiges today.

Ray Willis perpetuated and amplified the conservative, traditionalist elitism from which sprung this obnoxious behaviour, and its accompanying oppressive atmosphere. He became principal the year I became a student, in 1992. Shortly, weekly ‘assemblies’ in Memorial Hall were reinstated, the school song (of which I should find a copy for you) was sung regularly, and the uniform code became holy scripture overnight. The staff were terrified of this aloof and rarely visible man, who was monotone grey from the tip of his concrete hair to the line where his neck receded behind his collar. I never really knew exactly what they feared in him, but undoubtedly they did. Some staff were dismissed. Many were, it seems, put on notice.

The older students, in years 10 to 12, were more cognizant than I was of the conservative winds wrought by the new principal. Apparently the previous incumbent had been a cheerful and openly gay old man. Or maybe that’s just what they said—after all, ‘gay’ was the single most dire and frequent denunciation we had in our repertoire. (And since we sneered at everything not ourselves, consequently everything was ‘gay’.) The older students, able to harken back to the halcyon days of the senile old principal, were quick to demonise his replacement. They began referring to him as “Ray”—and it is a measure of the haughty demeanour of the man that we all took up this diminutive. It sapped him of his power, and we sort of knew it. At the end of 1993, on what has recently adopted the name “muck-up day”, a bunch of year 12 students applied weedkiller to the football oval. In letters 20 feet tall, they wrote the words “RAY = DESPOT”.

You know, I don’t think any equation could better illustrate my ambivalance towards that place. On one hand, the calculation had palpable veracity; Ray was, from our cloistered perspective, clearly a dictator of the most callous and forbidding variety. On the other hand, the graffiti was a symbol of the very sense of elitism he championed: never before and never since has the word “DESPOT” been writ large with weedkiller, and the authors both knew and delighted in it. I had no idea what the word meant, but was soon enlightened with the requisite note of condescension. It is the falseness and the slimy contempt built into that culture that remains with me, and it is summated by that simple equation.

Hellfire rained down from the principal’s office for that prank. The offenders were suspended, and prevented from attending their final exams. I’ve heard that many obituaries have been written of Ray in the last few days, but I guarantee that none of them included the words “a sense of humour”.

I completed my studies at Melbourne High School in 1995—not a moment too soon—and by January 1996 I had relocated to another city. Having spent eighteen years of my life in the one house, in Surrey Hills (an eastern suburb of Melbourne), I needed to move out and I needed to do it dramatically. So I traveled 900 miles along the Hume Highway by the dead of night and landed myself in Sydney, in the inner city suburb of Surry Hills. I made much, too much, of the irony.

One night in mid-January I was sitting on a couch in a sharehouse with a bunch of people I had only met a fortnight before, drinking wine in great quantity and watching Easy Rider on video, when the phone rang. Someone answered it, and pattered back into the lounge room, pointing at me. Lurching inquisitively to my feet, I picked up the phone.

It was Ray.

Years and consumption have eroded my recollection of that conversation, but not the sense of unreality that accompanied it. Here was the principal of a school of fifteen hundred students, a man I had cast as a villian in my teenage melodrama, calling me up to congratulate me on my final year results. And I was doing my best against all odds to give him the impression that I was sober. We discussed my writerly aspirations—my goal in Sydney, where I was to stay the better part of a year, was to write a taxpayer funded novel—and he suggested that when my novel was published I should return to the school to address the school assembly. I know that at that point I suppressed a giggle. The conversation lasted at least ten minutes, and when finally I hung up, I was exhausted and confused. It is a strange thing when you question your choice of demons.

I made a brief trip back to Melbourne in February that year, and at the last moment I decided to attend a reunion that was scheduled in that window. I sat awkwardly drinking grog at various tables, listening to young blokes referring to this as gay and that as gay. At some stage, Ray invited a few of us to wander over to the Memorial Hall, and see our names in gild on the honour boards. That was, and still is, the most ironic moment of my life so far—seeing my name up on the boards in the hall I hated, of the school I resented. We stood there and talked for a while, I don’t remember about what.

Anyway, it’s a shame about Ray. Here was a man who from a distance inspired the apprehension of wolves baying at the moon in full. But the two conversations I had with him, long after it had any relevance, one half-remembered and one not at all, gave me the thought that here too perhaps was just another undomesticated dog.

Joseph | | Comments(18)

Comments

Patrick

I have to say, I wasn’t sure where all of that was going, but it was interesting as hell. Excellently written, and the ending is so brilliantly summed up. I was floored, thanks for the excellent read.

Joseph

Thanks Patrick. You think you weren’t sure where all of it was going… Ah well, that’s what I enjoy about it though. ;)

William

Well here’s someone who can understand all this. As a current (2004) Yr 11 student at MHS, I am deeply moved and saddened by new of Mr Willis’ passing, and, like you Joseph, I too have lasting memories of the things that Ray Willis has done for me.

As you said, an inspiring man, one who will never be forgotten by all those who have entered the world under his guidance and the guidance of Melbourne High School.

the bellman

excuse the sydney ignorance, but i was just wondering if mhs was a private school or a selective public school (hell i dont even know if victoria has selective public schools or not)?

Andy C

Well, I can’t say I remember you Joseph (300 students was difficult enough) but you’re bang on about the superiority complex. The irony here is that by far the MOST consistently cutting barbs in my year (1997) were reserved for McRob girls. This had the direct effect of severely bracketing the possibility of meeting (and, um dating) lasses of (as Ray might have put it) a similar academic ‘ethos’. Some ex-students are yet to recover…

J

Yes, that was a really depressing aspect of the school. It’s endemic throughout every all-boys school though, I think. I went out with a MacRob lass in year 11 (I think), and while the experience does still occasionally cause me to wake in a sweat, I never extrapolated from the instance to the whole. I know some lovely survivors of that institution now.

the bellman, I was positive I wrote a long response to your question two weeks ago, which is odd and a bit worrying. But the short answer is the latter, with reservations.

Current MHS Student

When I heard the news of Mr Willis’ passing, I flew from Townsville some 1000 km away, to attend his funeral. I am extremely annoyed by the aloof nature of your submission and its own inherrent arrogance. It clearly reflects your immaturity and how ungrateful you are/were of the oppurtunities presented to you by the great institution, that is Melbourne High School.

As a current student who shared a close relationship with Mr Willis I would like to know what planet or drug you were on, when you wrote this article or when you formulated these thoughts. Instead of writing such egotistical nonsense, why don’t you gather a more accurate image of such a great man.

Whatever your intention was in writing this article, to criticise “elitism” at MHS or to make a mockery of a great man, you failed. Any appreciating MHS student knew Mr Willis as a generous, extremely humorous and kind-hearted man. Your last few stories about your phone call and your honour-board ego-trip do nothing to truly reflect what a fantastic man Mr Willis was.

Btw: Why do you keep harping on about things being ‘gay’and students being elitist - MHS has the most tolerant and respectful group of students I have come across - but hey, what would I know - I must be trapped within a ‘closed environment’, not ready to accept to think clearly, within the ‘real world’.

Stay in Sydney buddy

Joseph

Ah. I knew someone would eventually illustrate my point.

Current MHS Student

Me again - the one who ‘illustrated your point’. I think if you look at it closely, you, who claim some moral highground here, are the true illustrator of your supposed ‘point’. You appear to be the most pretentious and egotistical product of MHS. You seem to despise arrogance and elitism, yet you are the perfect result of this so-called problem.

You, who harps on about being drunk, watching easy rider, living in New York and working for NASA, appear to be one of the self obsessed maniacs you seem to despise.

But let me say, you are not representative of MHS, and do certainly not represent what most of us turn out like. Yes, we have ambition and self-confidence, but I have never seen it exhibited in such a negative and abhorrent way, as I have on this internet site.

Perhaps, in the future, you can stop using the memories of a great men, as mere tools in your bid to further your own image.

As my friend put it, “this guy’s the real wanker here”.

CURRENT MHS STUDENT

Well exsqueeze me! The knives may be coming buddy, but unless you yourself are an old boy of MHS or a current student, you who would have no idea as to what I am saying.

My comments on this article and its author are insignificant in comparison to the abuse he has dished out. So, why don’t you, “the Red Fox” mind your own business, and stop being so protective of this arrogant excuse for a writer.

I find your ignorance insulting. Merely using “that kind of invective” as you so pompously put it, is nothing in comparison to the invective this writer has used to describe a great and well-respected man. A man who many people loved and admired.

Now, if you think using a few crude terms outweighs tainting the memory of the finest gentlemen I knew, then you need to get your priorities right. If you think that insulting a man who fought cancer whilst running one of the finest schools in Australia with great success, is a lesser crime than using some “rude” or “shocking” terms against this ungrateful, sorry excuse for a person, then you have serious problems.

Current MHS Student

Dear, “the Man behind the Fox” I accept your sincere apologies, and retract some of the cruder sentiments I expressed towards you.

I dearly miss Mr Willis, and find it intolerable that anyone can insult his memory. I was extremely saddened by his passing, and cannot understand the views expressed by the author of the article in contention.

Thankyou for your apology and your understanding.

mhs kid

what you said about ray definitly put a new spin on my understnading of him

he seemed very nice, but it is not compeletly unreasonable to suppose that he was a bit of a despot, i think he was in a war or something

if you look at the timetable it runs by the minute, we get off school at 3:16 opposed to the far mor rounded figure of 315 . you can tell that whoever wrote that is a bit in the head, and it probably was, he built all this stuff for the army then this ridiculous hockey pavillion worth either 1 or 2 million, which is a total waste of money because the only people who use that are ppl outside our school using our facilities and a couple of p.e groups, but who gives a stuff about pe

i can;t doubt though that he did all that he did out of a genuine love of the school

he cried at speech night every year and made appearences even though he didn;t have the energy to sit up the front

he was a walking ghost

also, the gaybashing at mhs isn;t very bad anymore,

personally, i talk mainly of school work and books when i am at school with friends

the only people who bag macrob are people trying to get src rep or make jokes for assembly and its not out of malice and we like macrob

the elitism of the school is inculcated in the students , the selective entry plants this seed of superiority in the kids who do make it through and then they talk us up so we feel like we have to acheive in yr 9 every one studied hard, year 10 we realised it doesn;t matter how well you do so a larger portion didn;t try really hard but the ethos for me at least has turned me into a shameless nerd who revels in academic stuff

mhs is good,

interesting comment on ray

mr.kite is the new despot