Jordan Murrell: A Portrait

Your school captain, Jordan Murrell, sat down before this school year began to discuss her plans, her vision, and herself with Behind the Ivy, to allow us as a community to get to know her better. After this article, we believe that you will be as enamored with Murrell as we are. Without further ado, we present to you, Jordan Murrell: 

Before we begin to explore what Murrell plans to do as school captain, we must ask: how does she interpret the role itself? Professionally, Murrell believes that it is an opportunity to take the ideas we hear in school and gather them all as the collective voice of students. Through the force of those voices she gains the power to act as school captain. As Murrell highlights many times throughout the interview, it is not her voice that is important; rather, it is the voices of the students. Because of this, she doesn’t think that her ideas have to be radical, it’s just about using what she hears from the students to make things possible. On a more personal note, as school captain, Murrell is hoping to embody courage, persistence, and determination, and through these traits she wants to demonstrate that people from different backgrounds, especially people of colour, can be vehicles of change. 

To say that Murrell has been at Havergal a long time would be an understatement, but she didn’t want to be school captain for the entirety of that time. It was a dream she realized gradually, starting in seventh grade when she started paying a bit more attention to how she was being represented—and also how she wasn’t. As a student of colour at Havergal, sometimes it could be hard to see yourself in leaders that don’t look like you, but Murrell found that those who did the best job of it did always tried to include everyone. When she realized that, she decided that she wanted to do the same, and include everyone’s voice. 

Now that Murrell has the position, what does she plan to do with it? At the forefront of her goals for the coming year is inclusion. Murrell believes that Havergal as a community is on an upward slope, and each year we get more and more accepting. She hopes to use the past few classes as examples, but also wants to set a new tone of continuity in the way we view diversity. Murrell hopes to incorporate inclusion so thoroughly that minority experiences are something that we think and learn about constantly. She wants to move away from the “one and done” way of learning about diversity - while she values initiatives such as black history month and pride week, she wants the positive learning to also happen year round. Another area in which she sees potential for improvement is in the way we segregate ourselves at HC. Murrell wants everyone to feel apart of something, and not think that they are just part of one group and no other. She wants to explore how we can come together outside of clubs and sports, and discover the different types of communities in which people feel encouraged and recognized. 

Murrell also answered a series of personal questions, and through them it is evident that her love for Havergal runs through everything she does and who she is. When asked who she would invite to dinner, dead or alive, fictional or historical, she answered with Gloria Steinam, a prominent feminist. She would want to sit down with this trailblazing woman to take on her ideas at Havergal. Since we are an all girls school, she believes we would benefit from her message; Murrell continues on this note to say that there is something special about Havergal, a place where girls can be themselves and share their voice. Later, when asked if she would want to be famous, she answers with a surprising no, saying that she wouldn’t want to be in the limelight. If she had to be, she would choose to be famous for the person she is rather than the things she does. When asked if she thinks it is ironic that she doesn’t want the spotlight, but somehow managed to take on one of the most prominent roles in the school, she said that she didn’t apply for the attention. She truly believes that the role isn’t about her, that while she is the person others think of, she is just a spokesperson for everyone else in the school. Finally, when Murrell thinks of her perfect day, she imagines it at Havergal, on a breezy sunny day where she gets to school early, hangs out with her friends before classes, and has a schedule full of social sciences. She ends her perfect day with time to relax with her parents and siblings. It is these two things - family and education - that she is most grateful for in her life; two things she acknowledges that not everyone is fortunate enough to have. 

Through this portrait of Jordan Murrell, we can see that she is truly a formidable leader, ready to make a difference at Havergal. We at Behind the Ivy are excited to see what she accomplishes this coming year, and we wish her luck. We know that we as a community will be here to support her, and that without a doubt Jordan will support us in return.