The past four years at Cornell, and the last eight months in particular, have been a test of "ethical literacy," President Hunter Rawlings said during his May 26 Commencement address. And then he announced the results: Everyone -- students and faculty alike -- not only had passed the test, he said, but had excelled, to the credit of the university.
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| President Hunter Rawlings delivers the 2002 Commencement address at Schoellkopf Field. Charles Harrington/University Photography |
The 134th Commencement ceremonies had begun that Sunday morning under dark, rain-threatening skies. Many who trooped into Schoellkopf Field -- family members and friends, degree candidates and faculty members, as well as university trustees and staffers -- came prepared with umbrellas and foul-weather gear.
Recalling the change from pre-9/11 times, "when the world was a safer, saner, more prosperous place," Rawlings said the 2002 graduates were "earning their degrees in a year when events, both domestic and international, have caused enormous change and anxiety." Fortunately, he said, the approximately 6,000 degree candidates had been "educated in depth." He told them: "You leave equipped to continue educating yourself ... in a world where change is rapid and often unsettling."
Cornell's 10th president invoked an admonishment from the first -- the newly inaugurated Andrew D. White -- who told students: "You are not here to be made; you are here to make yourselves." Cornell students, Rawlings added, "have been doing that with zest and independence for 134 years." He pointed to a Sept. 17, 2001, teach-in, less then a week after the terrorist attacks, when hundreds of Cornellians gathered in Call Alumni Auditorium to hear faculty panelists and ask questions about the causes of terrorism and the likely U.S. response. Scores more lined up to enroll in the new class, Global Conflict and Terrorism, Rawlings noted; and in April, another well-attended teach-in focused on the Israel-Palestine conflict. At the same time, Cornell's Muslim students were visiting local elementary schools to increase youngsters' understanding of Muslim culture and history. The schoolchildren responded, Rawlings reported, with drawings that were presented to A.D. White Professor-at-Large Jane Goodall to thank her Roots and Shoots organization, which had sent the young Cornellians into the schools in the first place.
The president listed courses given through the campuswide Program in Ethics and Public Life, and said: "The moral perspective and tools for developing concrete, practical solutions to ethical problems which you have acquired in these courses, will continue to serve you well as you become practicing citizens of the world."
After congratulating the graduates on their achievements while at Cornell, which Rawlings described as "an open academic community in which you have played an active and engaged role," he told them their work was just beginning: "Recreate that kind of community in your part of the world, wherever that may be. Continue the work you began here, with heightened resolve, with a greater sensitivity to those whose faith and culture are different from your own, and with an enduring commitment to the democratic values inhering in Cornell University and the United States. They will endure," the president said. "And they will prevail."
Scattered drops of rain fell during the address on the crowd of nearly 40,000 -- a record attendance for a Cornell Commencement -- and the clouds refused to part. A few rays of sun might have been a dramatic accompaniment as the Cornell Chorus and Glee Club sang the National Anthem -- or even when two of its graduating members soloed on the U2 song, "MLK." Samuel Bradford and William Meakem sang Bono's words: "Sleep, sleep tonight; and may your dreams be realized; if the thundercloud passes rain, so let it rain, rain on him." Still no solar glow.
Beginning with the Graduate School and then each of the colleges, the respective deans presented their degree candidates. A murmur of warm appreciation passed through the Schoellkopf assemblage as Human Ecology Dean Patsy Brannon announced her candidates, and the sun appeared briefly, and retreated.
Then, with impeccable timing, just as the president conferred degrees en masse on the field of graduates, the sun came out for good. Later it would warm the tents of college receptions across campus throughout the afternoon, but first the long-sought light provided a theatrical flare as a 40,000-voice chorus sang to close the Schoellkopf ceremony; and once again "our noble Alma Mater" was "glorious to view."
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