With a new semester started, students gathered in Carlmont’s main gym on Tuesday to hear Keith Hawkins, who was first described as just a motivational speaker in previous weeks.

Hawkins came to Carlmont to talk to students on the importance of family. He shared many personal experiences, exchanged laughs, and shared some hilarious facial expressions. But was this all fun and games?

He shared one story in particular that came across to many students. When Hawkins described his brother and how he had been arrested and sentenced to Juvenile Hall.

Now his brother is blind, and paralyzed, after a fight broke out and the vapors from the blood caused him to become ill.

But the object of this was not to tell a story, but to narrate that his brother was send to jail because his “friends” left him at the scene of the crime, and his brother took on the full sentence for the felony he and his friends had commited.

He showed students that these boys were not his brother’s friends, but people who were taking advantage of him.

Hawkins repeated several times throughout the assemblies, “You are lucky if you leave high school with a few real friends.”

He came to Carlmont not to entertain or motivate, but to educate.