Reflections of Havergal: 1994-2019

It was indeed the little newspaper that could, and no doubt Val Caldwell would be delighted by the way it has been nurtured. A look at any BTI issue reveals the passionate and inquiring minds of the students involved—and their writing talents. The years have seen a number of offshoots of BTI in the Upper school (for example, The Blazer in 1998 and The Leaf in 2006), each speaking to the enthusiasm of students for the printed word. The Middle School has had columns in BTI , but it has also had students eager to publish its own paper:

Behind the Ivy ( BTI ), the School Newspaper

Havergal students have shown a penchant for investigative reporting since the school’s earliest years. Havergal: Celebrating A Century 30 tells of two intrepid students who, determined to test their mettle as reporters, “hid in a cupboard during a teachers’ meeting in order to get a scoop and got nothing but an hour’s boredom and a headache from the lack of air.” However, the first official school newspaper was spearheaded by student Val Caldwell. In a seven-page typed document, she articulated her vision of a student newspaper at Havergal. So passionate and well considered was her proposal that it was accepted, and the first issue of BTI , two pages long, appeared in October 1975, printed on a ditto machine.

Exam Study Tips” Middle School BTI , 2005

Ludemus , the School Yearbook

In spring 1898, a diffident staff member, Mildred Bapty, the first editor of Ludemus , wrote the magazine’s initial editorial: With the modesty becoming in the makers of a new magazine, we herewith present to the kind and indulgent attention of our readers the initial number of Ludemus . We cannot, and do not, expect to escape criticism. We trust that what we here bring before you will not be too childish for our older readers nor too heavy for more youthful minds. It shall be our endeavour to profit by all criticism, so that our magazine may grow in strength and beauty as it grows in years. Since that time, as the preceding drawing suggests, Ludemus has not failed to bring pleasure to those whose school lives are so lovingly documented. As Dr. Ditchburn wrote in the 2001–02 Ludemus , “Memoirs … diaries, photographs, yearbooks and scrapbooks are like a map or history. They show us the topography of our personal journey, they shape us with each revisiting, [and] they reveal our multiple selves like the mirror image that repeats endlessly.”

An issue of the BTI, April 2014.

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