MIDDLEBURY, Vt.—Dr. Walter E. Massey, president emeritus of Morehouse College and this year’s commencement speaker at Middlebury College, told the class of 2008 that he believes they are uniquely positioned to make a difference in the nation and the world. And he challenged them to participate fully in our democracy and use their education to help shape society in positive ways.
Introduced by President Ronald D. Liebowitz, Massey was one of 10 people receiving honorary degrees from Middlebury during commencement ceremonies on Sunday, May 25, including six alumni of the College. Also honored: Katharine V. ’76, Patricia H. ’72 and Susan M. Cashman ’72, three sisters who are all researchers and geology professors; Churchill G. ’71 and Janet H. Franklin ’72, longtime supporters of the College to whom the Franklin Environmental Center was dedicated on May 23; Philip O. and Amy Yeager Geier, pioneers in international education; and M. Arthur Jr. and former trustee Drue C. Gensler ’57, founders of M. Arthur Gensler Jr. & Associates Inc., a leading architectural and design firm, and grandparents of Aaron Gensler of the class of 2008. The weather cooperated gloriously for commencement, with sunny skies, a light breeze and temperatures in the 70s. Giving the student speech at this year’s event, held on the central quad behind Voter Hall, was Thomas Maxwell “Max” Nardini, former president of the Student Government Association, who thanked family members, the faculty (“We are eternally grateful for your fierce commitment to our educations”) and the College’s staff on behalf of “the utterly fantastic class of 2008 and our utterly fantastic Feb friends.”
As a beachball bounced from hand to hand above the sea of mortarboards in the senior class section, Nardini talked about the diversity reflected in the class, and reminded his classmates that “in our best moments, while we may not have always seen eye-to-eye, we looked each other in the eye. We listened to and respected one other, even while vehemently disagreeing. And, once in a while, we realized that we were actually wrong. If you remember one thing from your days at Middlebury, remember a time when you were wrong. After all, if you have the courage to admit when you are wrong, you will never be afraid to stand up for what you truly know to be right.”
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| From left, salutatorian Kristen Alicia Voorhees, President Ron Liebowitz, and valedictorian Mark Leonard Egan. |
Commencement honors went this year to Mark Leonard Egan, an economics major from Wayzata, Minn., who was the valedictorian, and to salutatorian Kristen Alicia Voorhees, a double major in history and chemistry/biochemistry from Dillon, Colo. Both graduated summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, with highest honors in economics for Egan and in history for Voorhees. Walter Massey, who celebrated his 50th reunion at Morehouse College this year, has in his long career been a researcher, scholar, professor and one of the country’s top science administrators, as well as president of Morehouse from 1995 to 2007. He told the commencement audience about a special connection he had with Middlebury, in the person of his freshman English teacher at Morehouse, Gladstone Lewis Chandler, a member of the Middlebury College class of 1926.
“When I landed in his class, from the 10th grade in high school,” Massey said, “I had no idea what a gerund was, and I thought a dangling participle was a species of fruit. So, Professor Chandler patiently tutored me, using a high school text simultaneously with the college text, in the fine points of reading, writing and speaking. He was absolutely fantastic. Martin Luther King Jr., also a Morehouse alumnus, credited Professor Chandler with influencing his legendary oratorical speaking style.”
While acknowledging that every college class is told it is a special class, graduating at a special time in history and capable of having a profound impact on society, he said that he really believes that's the case for the class of 2008. He cited this generation’s diversity and its willingness to form relationships outside their own racial, ethnic and economic backgrounds; their familiarity and facility with technology; and the fact that they are graduating in the midst of an unprecedented presidential campaign, “in which the contenders are a woman, a black man, and a person over 70 years old. No matter what happens in November, if you participate in the campaign in any way, you will have played a role in changing the face of the leadership of this country in ways we could only have imagined a few decades ago.”
His message for the class, he said, is that “your difference can make the difference, the difference in how we relate to one another, and how we solve the problems of our planet. I believe that ... you can, in ways that previous generations could not, fundamentally change our nation and our world for the better.”
Nowhere, Massey said, can this generation, and Middlebury’s class of 2008, have a greater impact than on the issue of race in America. He noted that this year is the 175th anniversary of the graduation of Alexander Twilight from Middlebury College. “As I hope you know, Twilight, who graduated in 1823 ... was the first African American to graduate from any college in the United States. So, Middlebury has a long history of participating in racial advancement in the United States.”
He also noted that the landmark Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education came 54 years ago, when he was a freshman at Morehouse. While he celebrated the progress made in the intervening years in race relations, he said that much work remains to be done. For example, in the current presidential campaign, “despite, I believe, everyone’s best efforts and Senator [Barack] Obama’s expressed desire to run a post-racialist campaign—that is, a campaign that acknowledges the historical and present-day importance of race, but does not make it a dominant or even a central part of his campaign—it seems that this has been almost impossible to achieve. After a very promising beginning, when all the candidates and most of their prominent supporters and the media mostly refrained from remarks with pejorative racial connotations, the race issue has moved to front-and-center of the campaign, and sometimes in very ugly ways.”
Still, Massey said, he believes that “things have improved, and that your generation is key—essential, really—to continuing and, indeed, accelerating that improvement in the area of race relations, and also in the actual quality of life for all Americans. Furthermore, if we do not recognize that we have made progress, despite the many problems, we may lose our confidence that we can, indeed, become even better.”
He said he was here to remind the class about “the importance of using the influence you will have to help shape society in more positive ways. And, because you can make such a positive impact, it is important that you participate fully in the full spectrum of activities that fuel a democracy. So volunteer, join, sign up, vote, even run for office or support someone who does, but be involved.
“Believe me: Your mere involvement will make the difference—literally all the difference in the world.”
