Commencement
Remarks
2018
Members
of the class of 2018. We are gathered here to celebrate your graduation, but we
are also here to celebrate and recognize the accomplishment of the many people
who made this day possible.
First,
I would like to ask the faculty and staff present to stand so our graduates can
express their gratitude. These are the people who have sustained, frustrated,
and inspired you in your journeys at Susquehanna. You can best honor them by
applying what you have learned from them in your careers and as you become
leaders in your communities.
Next,
would the families and friends of our graduates stand to be recognized and
thanked. These are the people that encouraged you, loved you, and made significant
sacrifices so you could be here. They will continue to be with you as you undertake
the next steps in your respective odysseys.
Lastly,
we should take a moment to think about those whose gifts have made it possible
for all of us to be here. Susquehanna began as a gift of land and funds from the
leaders of Selinsgrove to create the Missionary Institute and a collegiate home
for the daughters and sons of local families who were not called to religious
service. Since then, every Susquehanna student has benefitted in significant
ways from the support of alumni and friends of the university, many of whom
provided gifts to support generations of students they would never see. It is a
remarkable and inspiring legacy.
Members
of the class of 2018, we mark the close of your academic careers at Susquehanna
University with this celebration of commencement. Commencement refers to the
beginning.
Ours
is a business of beginnings, beginnings that unfold in myriad directions, the
measure of which is seen in the span of the lives of those who call this place
alma mater. Please remember that Susquehanna will always be your alma mater,
and you are always welcome home.
We are here to celebrate the seeds
that have been planted in you, which we anticipate will emerge in glorious
splendor as each of you makes your mark on the world. This is your time to
exercise the leadership for which you have been preparing.
As W.E.B. Du Bois wrote:
“Now is
the accepted time, not tomorrow, not some more convenient season. It is today
that our best work can be done and not some future day or future year. It is
today that we fit ourselves for the greater usefulness of tomorrow. Today is
the seed time, now are the hours of work, and tomorrow comes the harvest and
the playtime.”[1]
(endquote)
Ours
is a business of beginnings. We gather today to send you forth to engage your
future with reckless abandon and your world with wonder and tenderness. We are
here to wish for you, the life Mary Oliver wished for herself when she wrote:
“When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom taking the world into my arms.”[2]
Ours
is a business of beginnings. Each year we welcome a new class to begin their
academic journeys, and every year we bid bon voyage to a class whom we have
challenged, cajoled, and supported during their matriculation. This is the life
cycle of the university.
Although
today marks my first commencement at Susquehanna and the first at which I have
the honor of conferring degrees, this is the 32nd year as a
professor or administrator that I will watch a class graduate. Every year I am
more excited to be a part of the ceremony, because with each new year, I have
an ever-richer knowledge of what lies before you, what you can accomplish, and how
your experiences here will help make it possible.
When
I was a first-year university student, I read the following poem for the first
time, but being fresh to the academy, I could not adequately appreciate Walt
Whitman’s sentiment in his poem for the inauguration of a public school. Now
that appreciation grows with each passing year.
AN old man's thought of school,
An old man gathering youthful memories and blooms that youth itself cannot.
An old man gathering youthful memories and blooms that youth itself cannot.
Now only do I know you,
O fair auroral skies - O morning dew upon the grass!
O fair auroral skies - O morning dew upon the grass!
And these I see, these sparkling eyes,
These stores of mystic meaning, these young lives,
Building, equipping like a fleet of ships, immortal ships,
Soon to sail out over the measureless seas,
On the soul's voyage.[3] (endquote)
These stores of mystic meaning, these young lives,
Building, equipping like a fleet of ships, immortal ships,
Soon to sail out over the measureless seas,
On the soul's voyage.[3] (endquote)
One
of the great rewards of university life is that we enjoy a state of perpetual
renewal. Each day we have the opportunity to chart a new course in Whitman’s
proverbial soul’s voyage. Each year we are renewed as we send forth a class of
students we have come to know and love, whom we have provoked and nurtured, and
from whom we too have learned much.
Thank
you for that, and congratulations to you all as you commence to “sail out over
the measureless seas, On your souls’ voyages.”