In final Commencement address, Rawlings celebrates CU student achievement, fortitude

"No other class in recent years has confronted a more harrowing set of issues, endured tragedies of a greater magnitude, or achieved as much, over such a range of metrics, as the Class of 2003."
-- President Hunter Rawlings

By Roger Segelken

Graduates at Cornell's 135th Commencement ceremonies May 25 were challenged to confront a wrenching dilemma, which worsened during their time at the university -- a "momentous problem," President Hunter Rawlings pointed out, that Cornell has helped them prepare to resolve.

Recalling the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 -- in which Cornell lost 38 members of its extended family -- and in the face of the "specter of international terrorism," Rawlings asked the graduates to consider "the tension between national security and civic liberty."

President Hunter Rawlings prepares to deliver his final Cornell Commencement address. Robert Barker/ University Photography

"The simple fact," he said, "is that we all want security and we all want our personal and civic freedoms. The not-so-simple fact is that it has now become, even in this country, almost impossible to have both simultaneously.

"How," Rawlings asked, "do we resolve this dilemma? Or rather, how will you resolve this dilemma, when you enter your careers and productive civic lives in the world's strongest democracy? It appears very likely that you will confront this challenge for many years to come, and the answers you give will define the country you live in and the country you leave to your children."

Cornell, Rawlings argued, has helped its students prepare to meet such dilemmas. "First and foremost," he told the graduates, "[Cornell] has given you intellectual toughness. ... You have met high standards. You have solved complex problems. You have demonstrated, in the classroom and outside it, a moral and intellectual seriousness."

The Commencement address, the eighth and final one for Rawlings, who will join the Cornell faculty as a professor in the Department of Classics, was heard by nearly 40,000 at Schoellkopf Field, including more than 6,000 graduates receiving bachelor's and advanced degrees, families and friends from around the world, university trustees, administrators, staff and faculty members, and at least one baby -- carried on the procession route from the Arts Quad to the stadium by proud mom Antje Baeumner, assistant professor of biological and environmental engineering.

The highlight of the weekend's Commencement festivities may be remembered as much for what did not happen: It didn't rain that Sunday morning (despite meteorological predictions and logistical plans for indoor ceremonies), and no one wore surgical masks (as fears concerning travelers from SARS-affected areas abated). Instead, umbrellas became photo op props and the only medical paraphernalia in sight was the inflated, extra-long examination gloves traditionally flaunted by veterinary graduates during the ceremony.

Enthusiastic applause answered Rawlings' kudos for victorious Big Red sports teams (national champion women's polo and ECAC champion men's ice hockey), graduates pursuing public service (31 new recruits to the Teach for America program and more than 20 to the Peace Corps) and for the university's adherence to principle in the face of "the uneasy tension between national security concerns and the traditional openness and freedom of American society" ("... Cornell has turned down research funding," Rawlings said, "that would require that our findings, in the name of national security, be subject to prior restraint").

Knowing laughter was the response when the president said, "Your class is one of the last Cornell classes to graduate without a summer reading requirement." Nevertheless, the class that missed the Frankenstein and Guns, Germs and Steel assignments for freshmen, still managed to produce two Rhodes Scholars, a Churchill Scholar "and winners of many other academic, artistic and service awards," Rawlings announced. And he pointed with pride to the participation by members of the graduating class in memorable campus theatrical performances, "including most recently in Hamlet," and the completion of research theses by many, including Cornell Presidential Research Scholars, "on topics ranging from the rhythmic evolution of triplets in musical scores to the simulation of human walking by robots."

The president also cited Cornell's insistence on retaining its "tradition of academic freedom and openness to diversity and multiple points of view," and he focused on a student project that garnered the 2003 Perkins Prize for Interracial Understanding by bringing together more than 100 students of the Moslem and Jewish faiths to create a mosaic, now on display in Anabel Taylor Hall's One World Room. "Opportunities to participate in projects like the mosaic are integral to a Cornell education," the president commented.

"Cornell maintains an uneasy blend of empathy and rigor, of freedom with responsibility," Rawlings told the graduates. "This is not a place for the privileged to feel smug. It is not a place for the meek to avoid problems. It is not pat, not simple. It is idiosyncratic, even iconoclastic. This combination of attributes makes Cornell an uneasy place to be, but it is also what gives Cornell its character. And character is what you will need if you are going to contribute to the world you are now entering."

It has been his privilege, Rawlings said, to have served as president of Cornell for the past eight years. And he added: "And now it will be my privilege to teach and pursue scholarship here with your successors. This is indeed a good place to be, especially at a time like this."

The full, prepared text of President Rawlings' Commencement address can be found online at: http://www.news.cornell.edu/campus/Commencement03/gradspeech03.html.