Welcome to everyone in the hall and everyone watching remotely. In a few words, as we launch this morning's rituals, all of us here in the hall today — and those with us from afar across the world — want to send you off with a dignified, loving, celebratory ceremony that gives you a moment and a space to reflect on the four years you have lived as F&M students, both individually and as a cohort. We want to recognize you as resilient, as achievers, as creators. 

You are known to some as “the COVID generation.” You were deprived of a high school graduation and thrown into what one of your classmates called “the distant and despondent spaces of college,” where the word “remote” described not only a mode of learning, but also your social and effective lives. You started your F&M years living in a kind of limbo, and yet, despite that start you flourished. Learning from every hardship and every opportunity, you've made it work. And that, my young friends, is worth celebrating. That is well worth a fulsome round of applause. 

A great metaphor for your accomplishment is the medical notion of alchemy, which means transforming something of little value into something precious. A parent told me recently how she recalls the drop-off in August 2020, when families were not allowed to help their students move in. She said: “It felt like we pushed him out of the car at 10 miles per hour at the door, and threw his bags out behind him and headed home.”

But you, after settling into your rooms alone, whether here on campus or in other parts of the world, you brought about a miracle. Through masks and hand sanitizers and social distancing, in countless Zoom classes and appointments, you worked in two dimensions and in isolation, and you still found a way to discover one another and yourselves. You created the miracle of community. 

President Altmann addresses the Class of 2024 during Commencement on May 11, 2024. (Photo by Eric Forberger)

You somehow forged a quick, close forever bond in spite of — and perhaps because — your often bewildering circumstances. When you came back together in fall 2021 for your sophomore year, you brought with you a precious commodity. You brought real joy. Joy to be back, joy to be together, and that joy leavened your learning. It became the accelerator. Out of distance, you created engagement, friendship, and commitment. After sterile conditions of learning and living, you dug into every in-person, real-life experience available once the world began to reopen and you threw yourself headlong into living fully. It turns out that you are alchemists, turning alienation into kinship, transforming foundation into possibility, forging leadership from early loss. My charge to you, dear graduates, is simple.

Do not lose that joy. Make sure you keep living and learning in three dimensions and beyond. You are a class of doers, a class we are intensely proud of, and a class that is very dear to my heart. I'll be watching you with great admiration and great interest as you soar.

Congratulations!