Dear Class of 2020,

At last, a chance to address you as a group! I am truly sorry that this is not the Commencement you dreamt of before we were swept up in a pandemic, or that we dreamt of for you. Please be sure that you will have opportunities to gather on our campus again when it is safe to do so, to hug your friends, walk through these beautiful grounds, to see your mentors, and to celebrate your accomplishments in person.

But it is really important to stop for a moment now, to recognize what it means that you have completed your F&M degrees and you have moved beyond our "Lux et Lex" gates and into the wider world.

When I arrived at the College, you were about to start your junior year. Who could have known what we would live through together as you navigated your junior and senior years -- with events that left us a changed campus and a changed world, that called upon us to step up and speak up, and upended much of what we took for granted or thought of as "normal."

There is so much we could not do in the last year. We've all missed family, friends, sports competitions, labs and performances in shared space, landmark events like weddings and births and funerals.

You have been touched by dire grief, including the heartbreaking losses quite recently of two beloved classmates -- Ellie Halm and Vicente Brambila. [Significant pause here.] It is hard to know how to mourn when you cannot be with one another and with the loved ones' families.

Sorrow and success often exist simultaneously, especially as we make our way through life as adults.

You've also had to find new, distanced ways to celebrate the good things, including this commencement. Like you, I had looked forward to the moment when you would cross the stage, to meeting your relatives. I wanted to shake your hand, to look you in the eye, and say, "What you did is a grand achievement! What you have invested in your F&M education will serve you well. You can, and you will, make a difference."

We have learned to look for those often elusive silver linings. By now it is clear that there are some unexpected lessons from a pandemic. Something so dramatic as the events of the last year can serve to liberate us from previous expectations. Social science research shows that when you free yourself, voluntarily or involuntarily, from a given set of aspirations, you can find tremendously successful pathways where you might never have thought to look.

How do you find those unexpected pathways? Very often, it happens through relationships, through the connections you've made with faculty, friends, staff, coaches, and alumni. Luckily, we now know how to nourish our networks at a distance. I urge you to stay connected with the people who have been — and who will remain — important in your life as part of your F&M family.

That F&M family stretches quite literally across the globe. As students, it's likely that you depended on alumni in some way, whether for financial aid through their gifts to the College, or for career or grad school advice. Now you are the alumni. Future generations of F&M grads will turn to you for help. Make sure to keep those connections strong — you will always have this special place and your shared experience in common.

In these difficult days, it has never been more clear that the world needs Diplomats. It needs you. In your years at F&M you have honed your ability to make connections across difference, to think deeply, to ask the right questions. These attributes will serve you and others very well. At this moment in our shared history, it is imperative to rebuild human connections and to bring your knowledge to bear in the pursuit of your own personal fulfillment and professional success, but also as community service. This is the moment when we need to merge civic knowledge with civic action. You are graduating at a time when you have vital work to do.

Here's an important truth: for all that you have already accomplished, your real work, your life, your journey, are still largely before you. The poet Wendell Berry wrote on that topic. Berry wrote:

"It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings."

That last line again: "The impeded stream is the one that sings."

My charge to you, the courageous Class of 2020, is to hold fast to the care, intelligence, and persistence that it took for you to succeed at Franklin & Marshall College and to bring them with you into the world around you now. Follow your passions with determination and joy, despite the obstacles. Nourish your academic heartbeat. Cultivate your intellectual curiosity. Fight anti-intellectualism wherever you encounter it, and help bring perspective to every conversation. When your path is impeded, find ways through, around, over, beyond the obstacles, to move forward.

You are prepared for this work. You are equipped for this journey. You can be the leaders who accelerate positive change with wisdom, strength and compassion. In the glorious words of United States' Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman:

"If we merge mercy with might,
and might with right,
then love becomes our legacy,
— and change our children's birthright."

You will be special to me, Class of 2020, and to the College forever. No other class will ever experience exactly what you have lived through. You left Franklin & Marshall a better place for your years here. I know that you will do the same in venues and communities large and small. You will make that "impeded stream sing." I am so proud of all that you have accomplished, and I am thrilled at the prospect of all that you will become.