Comes a moment when we can no longer go on as if we know who we are and where we came from;

Time when we must take true account of ourselves and those who have gone before us;

Put into words that which we burningly believe in and that for which we are untiringly willing to stand up and fight.

For there are too many ways people of good conscience can deceive themselves,

and there are too many ways such people can be deceived,

And 'tis a bitter truth that such deception invariably proceeds from sound assumptions and benign attitudes,

The best of intentions have ever been our undoing.

That is why we, the men and women who form the body of students known as Magna Carta,

We who judge each other to be men and women of good conscience

(For no one can judge this for themselves)

We who follow in the traditions of decades, walk through these hallways that were birthed when this, our country, was young,

Who touch these walls once touched by academics now long gone and forgotten, lost in the gathering mists of time,

Who can glimpse the once and future student only in fleeting, elusive epiphanies and half-imagined moments of preternatural insight,

Seeing twoscore years into the past and catching sight of the fashions of yesteryear,

We who hear the echoes of departed students, those who once stood and loved where we now stand and love,

And we who in our dreams observe the moment far into the future when the two young lovers yet to be born will desperately embrace in front of this classroom door so known to us and our kind,

Must as much for ourselves as our posterity now commit our purpose to paper and define our spirit and our dream, and give final form to our dearest desires and our purest hopes,

We must raise our eyes from the tripping ground, and take brave and beautiful flight.