Gavel

Our Student Organization should select the Common Gavel, a key working
tool of our craft, as our emblem of leadership.

Let us explore the symbolic meanings of a gavel to learn more about the
nature of student leadership. As we proceed, we will find out why student
organizations are enthusiastically emphasizing leadership training
and understand why SBO annually rotate leadership roles.

As we learn how to become better leaders in our Student body, we will also
become better student of our institution. Our objective tonight is to learn
about leadership through exploring the various symbolism of the gavel as
our badge leadership.

We learn in the EA degree that a Common Gavel is an instrument which

was made use of leaders to break off the corners of rough stones, the
better to fit them for the builder’s use. And as such, a gavel represents a
stone-working mallet or maul.

But shortly thereafter we learn that a gavel symbolizes higher

purposes. We use the gavel for a more noble and glorious purpose to
divest from our minds, hearts, and conscience of all vice, trappings, and
superfluities of life, thereby fitting us as living stones, for that spiritual
building – that house not made with hands – eternal in the heavens.

In other words, the gavel is used to chip away at those things that plague
and infest our minds, to divest ourselves of whatever we feel are shameful
or reprehensible. It hews away at the imperfections of the rough ashlar in
us to form the perfect ashlar that we strive to become.

The gavel is placed in the hands of the President to help remind him to
give proper instruction, to lead the Craft where they should go, and to set
them on the path to contemplate higher things. Each meeting is opened
and closed at the sound of the gavel. Aside from the square and
compasses, the gavel is the most prominent working tool in any
organization, and certainly the noisiest.

Yet a Common Gavel has imbedded in it several other rich meanings than
those that we learn about in the academe.

The Common Gavel appears in the hands of many different types of

people. It is placed in the hands of Judges, who rule on points of law. It is
placed in the hands of lead legislators and heads of city boards, to
announce when order should be restored. The gavel is a sign of authority
that the person wielding it may make pronouncements. It is placed in the
leader’s hands, whether it is the mayor, the president of a school board, or
the Speaker of the House.
When chief executives of organizations retire, a cherished retirement gift is
a gavel engraved with their name and dates of their service. The gavel is a
symbol of that person’s leadership over the organization they served.

When an elected or a new President of an organization takes over the

leadership, the Worshipful President relinquishes the gavel into his hands
and hand it to his successor. The passing of the gavel demonstrates a
transfer of leadership from one person to another.

These are all examples of ways in which the gavel symbolizes authority
and leadership.

The keys then for us to grow in leadership come down to three points.

First, we must practice leadership in School. We must be willing to take on

roles that we don’t feel we are naturally gifted at doing. We must be brave
and give it a try. Where else will be get practice at being a leader if not in
our School?

Second, we must permit ourselves and others to make mistakes or

omissions. No one learns to ride a bike without taking a few spills. If we
are players in a band, and the director makes a mistake, we can still follow
his lead, and give him permission to make errors.

Third, and finally, the gavel of leadership reminds us that we must plan. We
must grow in organizational skills that we need in our Student Body
Organization, work, and family. By being organized, resourceful, and filled
with zeal for all we do, we can help coordinate and lead our families, our
fellow students, and our entire studentry.

As we move into the season of leadership, I charge you to be willing to step

up, to grow in leadership, and eagerly to accept the Gavel of Leadership
when it is placed in your hands.