PARIS – The sun shone brightly Saturday on the green silk caps and gowns of 259 students as they sat together as a class one more time.

Surrounding the class of 2004 at Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School was a crowd of their relatives and friends, teachers and administrators, gathered at the Don Gouin Athletic Field to celebrate their graduation.

“Well this is it – the Big Kahuna,” said Jennifer Johnson, class vice president, in welcoming remarks. Johnson urged her classmates to “find that path that makes you truly happy,” and then said “Good luck and congratulations. We made it!”

Principal Joe Moore, quoting Thomas Jefferson, said that democracy depends on the “diffusion of knowledge among the people,” and told the graduates that the education they’d received at OHCHS was their foundation for the future.

“Don’t forget the lessons of love, caring, trust and honesty that you’ve learned here,” he said. And like Johnson, he urged them to seek happiness in life.

Class salutatorian Robert McVety followed with a speech filled with thanks to his parents, his other family members, his coaches and his teachers.

“Oxford Hills is definitely blessed to have such a great teaching staff,” he said.

McVety told the crowd that “success is in the eye of the beholder” and warned his classmates against becoming obsessed by material things.

“Many people have put on a mask to fit in,” McVety said. He recalled time spent with ski instructors who’d opted not to go on to college.

At first, he said he wondered at their apparent lack of ambition. But then he realized that “This is a lifestyle that they chose. I had no right to criticize them.”

Valedictorian Sienna Tinsley had a similar message of tolerance to share. She said she was afraid when he entered high school after being home-schooled all her life. What would people think of her?

But then she realized that “fear stems from ignorance,” and that those fears dissolved when she got to know her fellow classmates.

Tinsley said it is important in life to have the courage to try new things, because that’s the key to change and growth.

“When in doubt, make a fool of yourself,” she said. “When in doubt, leap.”

Even something as big as religion, she said, need not divide people if they are willing to look for common ground. The biblical golden rule of “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is found in similar form in all of the world’s great religions, she said.

Tinsley also urged her classmates to “always try your hardest at whatever you do” and to not forget “to be a kid” as they take on the responsibilities of adulthood.

“Good luck, everyone, I love you all.”

Commencement speaker Ken Carstens, an ordained minister who fought against apartheid in his home country of South Africa, told the students he was amazed at their depth of knowledge and understanding about issues when he met with some of them earlier in the week.

Carstens said Thomas Jefferson warned that if the power in government ever shifted to the banking institutions, the experiment of democracy would be over.

Saying the current government is indeed controlled by the wealthiest people, Carstens said “Is the experiment over? Let it not be over, my friends. If you can see what I saw when I was your age, you can do it now. You can re-establish a genuine democracy.”