Life is Change

Remarks as prepared for delivery May 9, 2015

Please join me in thanking all of the colleagues and students who have worked so hard and generously to create the series of Commencement events and the wonderful use of space that culminates today with this magnificent ceremony.

We're grateful to our distinguished honorary degree recipients, each one a leader, a creator, and a builder of a better world.

Sherry Turkle is one of America's most eminent thinkers on the rise of digital technologies and the costs and consequences of our substituting MOOCs, smart phones, and social media for authentic, engaging conversation.

Kwesi Koomson '97 used his F&M education to go back home to Ghana and create pioneering schools in rural communities where, just ten years ago, none of the middle school students were passing the entrance exam to attend high school. Now, they all do — including one, Emmanuel Arthur, who graduated from Kwesi's academy in 2007 and will, today, receive his well-earned F&M degree. Emanuel, can you please stand?

And our speaker, Richard Plepler '81, used his F&M education to become the leader of the most influential entertainment and media company on the planet, HBO.

I first met Mr. Plepler a few years ago when I auditioned for the role of Tyrion Lannister in Game of Thrones. He turned me down and suggested I pitch him on something else. And that's how it came to be that this year F&M is hosting the most exciting Commencement speaker in America.

It's great to be outside today.

To the families and loved ones, our arms are wide open. We welcome you, and we thank you.

When I look at your impressive children, I see forward, to a future we cannot know but which they'll create with their minds and ways and words.

Families, you see forward, too — but you also see backward:

You see in each of today's graduates that angelic newborn, little as a loaf of bread…

You see that impish toddler flicking peas to the floor from her high chair, teasing you, knowing exactly what she's doing…

You see the sleeping child, dreaming in the glow of a nightlight, so trusting, with clothes for the first day of kindergarten laid out on a chair…

And you see the brave adventurer peering over the handles of a bicycle, or for the first time finding magic in a book…

It goes too fast. Change is life. One day we're reading them "Goodnight Moon" and then the next day they're beating us at chess, or showing us algebra homework we can't help them with, or shedding teenage tears we don't know how to wipe away.

Which brings us to this day and space and place… Change is life. We see before us 535 individual demonstrations of how much a good person can grow in a few fast turns of this earth around the sun.

Families, you gave them love and life, taught them right, guided them through change, and empowered them with freedom.

Graduates, please stand, face this crowd, and give the loudest thanks you've got to all those who are here today, or here in spirit, whose love has been your launching pad.

Ten days ago, when exams ended, the campus became a ghost town. All that was left in Shad were sleeping bags and empty cans of Red Bull. Facebook told us something was happening in Myrtle, but I have a sense that the good stuff didn't get posted.

And now everyone is back, and it's wonderful, but not exactly normal. The operative adjective at the Senior Toast two nights ago was "bittersweet" — and that's the way it's supposed to be at those "closing times" when we mark some other beginning's end.

Today we celebrate your love and friendships, your growth and joy, the ways you came to college and changed — changed to live.

We celebrate your papers and theses and independent studies here at the fourth-most rigorous college in the land, those first Foundation courses, your dive into depth with the major, the mentoring relationships with professors, the running conversations and debates, your curiosity and creativity and catalyzing minds.

We celebrate learning outside of class — in the field or on the field, in Central Market or Central Asia, on stage or at work.

We celebrate the times you crossed borders, crossed disciplines, crossed boundaries, and crossed belief systems.

We celebrate the times and ways you lived in truth — stepping up, making up, owning up — those personal moments of greatest integrity — whether getting help or giving back, going first or holding back, reaching out or coming out.

We celebrate your long years scaling mountains toward this degree — and all the times you took the hard path — and we celebrate the loved ones who carried you on their backs at least half way up that slope, and whose lives and sacrifices you honor with today's walk across the stage.

We celebrate your origins.

68 of you are the first in your families to go to college.

64 of you are international students — including four from a nation we hold dear in our hearts, the country of Nepal.

We celebrate each of you as individuals — Mark and Markera, Kapz and Katrina, Robert and Kandy, Minje and Amer, Emily and Leah, Mohamed and Isaiah, Marissa and Grace, Arya and Megan, Allie and Emmanuel, Hannah and Zach, Keiran and Kayla, Katie and Tashi, Jaclyn and Alayna, Michael and Zitong, Derek and Zheng, Nick and Hayley, Luk and Greg, Vicky and Kimmie, Rachel and Daniel.

Of course, I could go on — we know each of you as a distinct individual — each with your own interior lives, your own freedoms and faiths, your own drives and dignity, your own voices and your own legacies here…

We celebrate you today as people of consequence, with open futures. ...And always, we hope open to change.

You've built your brains here to give you the deeply advantageous ability to see and steer change, to ride and make change. In a world where most fear change, you've lived it, and you must continue to change — and we will welcome you back at reunions excited to learn who you've become and with absolutely no interest in trying to slot you back into your undergraduate identities.

Don't fear coming back because you've changed — come back because you've changed.

Gathered on a Green made into a college by the founders of American democracy, we also celebrate today two traditions bigger than all of us, now grafted into your neural pathways and DNA.

First, we celebrate a 228 year-old institution built by our forefathers and foremothers to bring into practice the audacious idea of American democracy.

I hope it inspires all who are here to recall that these 535 robed graduates, and all who work here as scholars and educators, are the return on Benjamin Franklin's 200-pound investment in education as a down payment on democracy.

And I hope you are inspired to recall that, each semester and each year, we live out the long vision of Chief Justice John Marshall, inventor of the Supreme Court — that democracy, justice, private enterprise, and education are four interwoven strands of a great chord pulling our world forward.

As much as any college in this country, Class of 2015, Franklin & Marshall College — your alma mater—reflects the old and enduring American idea of education as a democratic act. This is something to take with you, to reflect upon, to believe in, and to support, for this country and the world.

The second tradition that we celebrate today reaches back even further, to antiquity, and that is the idea of liberal arts learning. Class of 2015, this, too, is now your tradition.

This is the tradition that values rigorous study in a range of fields, small classes as intellectual communities, and teaching undergraduates how to conduct research.

This is the tradition that promotes the faculty scholar as model and mentor, and sees the direct engagement of mind-on-mind as the fire-kindling process that forges untold greatness.

This is the tradition that believes every student can cultivate as aesthetic sense, analytical abilities, a respect for complexity, the ability to quantify and compute, and an appreciation for the scientific method, active learning, and the ability to apply knowledge with action.

This is the tradition that sees students as the shapers of civilization and seeks to embolden them with freedom of thought and the mindset to create.

This is the tradition that views learning along with love as the essential human gestures, ends in and of themselves.

I remind you: You are the product of these twin elevating traditions — liberal arts education, and the distinctive F&M way of providing it.

Some on this Green, and many before us, have dedicated their lives to these traditions. They are larger than all of us, and you are larger because of them.

And so, I ask you, the graduates of the Class of 2015, to value your liberal arts education, to advocate for it, to defend it, to help it change, and to secure this way of learning for those who will follow you.

Your F&M education will always be a part of you and it will grow within you as you change. Everything you made and loved here stays with you where you venture next. And when you come back to home base, to F&M, changed in ways neither you nor we can imagine today, our arms will be open, and we will be proud.

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Citations:

Richard Plepler '81: Doctor of Letters

Robert Kwesi Koomson '97: Doctor of Humane Letters

Sherry Turkle, Ph.D.: Doctor of Science

Lynn Matluck Brooks: Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Foundation Award for Distinguished Teaching

Michael L. Anderson: Bradley R. Dewey Award for Outstanding Scholarship

Robert Gray: Socrates Citation

Cecile Zorach: Socrates Citation

Lina Bernstein: Socrates Citation

Christine Alexander: Richard Kneedler Distinguished Service Award