Baccalaureate
A live stream link for the 2025 Baccalaureate ceremony will be posted several days before the event.
2024 Middlebury College Baccalaureate Service
[ Music ]
Mark R. Orten: We pause to acknowledge that Middlebury College sits on land which has served as a site of meeting and exchange among Indigenous peoples since time immemorial. The Western Abenaki are the traditional caretakers of these Vermont lands and waters, which they call Ndakinna, or “homeland.” We remember their connection to this region and the hardships they continue to endure. Let us take a moment of silence to pay respect to the Abenaki elders and to the Indigenous inhabitants of Turtle Island, past and present. [ Silence ] We give thanks for the opportunity to share in the bounty of this place and to protect it. We are all one in the sacred web of life that connects people, animals, plants, air, water, and earth. Now let us join in the spirit of invocation. Let us be still for a moment and come to our full senses, setting aside all that it took to get us here and all that we plan to do after. And just for this moment, notice our glorious setting, the growing energies of pomp and circumstance all around, the feelings of pride and joy and relief mingled, albeit for some, also with anxiety or even dread. But underlying it all, accomplishment, just here, just now, just this. Infinite now, dawn upon us in this baccalaureate moment of our weekend of celebration as we bear witness to the miraculousness of this day. Infinite wisdom and inscrutable mystery inspire us with any and all that is divine to make this sacred moment of our togetherness a humble affirmation of achievement, of knowledge, of familial love, and collegial kinship, a personal perseverance, and the experience of learning. Bring to us and to the Class of 2024 an informed compassion, an educated commitment to the right and the true and the good. Amin, amén, and amen. Blessed be these proceedings. [ Silence ]
Jesse Bowman Bruchac: [Foreign language] I congratulate you all. [ Foreign language spoken ] May your knowledge lead you to a peaceful and honest life filled with love and compassion for others. Honor those who have come before you and those yet to come. Acknowledge that all desire a good life so that your days will be long, and summer will always be near. [ Silence ]
Laurie L. Patton: Good afternoon, and welcome to our Baccalaureate Service. Historically, baccalaureate services provide an opportunity to reflect on the meaning of an undergraduate education in the liberal arts and sciences tradition. Hence, this is an event of a very traditional nature. As we move through the rituals and traditions of today’s service, I invite you all to also remember the particular circumstances, the unique circumstances that bring us all here together today. Four years ago, give or take a few months, whether you began in September or February, you gathered in this space to mark the beginning of your college education. However, you weren’t really in this space. You were virtual. And you may or may not have remembered the words of wisdom that we shared with you. I’m going to say more about that a little bit later. We were trying to be together, begin together. And that, too, was an auspicious occasion. So is this, even more so because we are now physically gathered together. Not only have you completed your degree requirements, but you have done it largely in the company of the people in this chapel, sometimes, people you only knew remotely and now you know as they sit nearby, physically present to you. Your classmates, your roommates, your teammates, your fellow artists, a chapel full of those whom you only knew by distance, by Zoom, have become a chapel full of friends. You are the artisans of friendship that is so much a part of Middlebury. You are here together as you could not be during those days. That part of education that happened between you and among you, that sacred art of friendship, you built relationships that don’t appear on your transcripts. But those relationships are vital. They are the life givers to what you learned at Middlebury, perhaps the most essential element of your education and an important part of what you will take with you in your hearts when you leave us tomorrow. As part of what is in our hearts today, we want to invoke our gratitude for Dean Mark Orten and Jeff Buettner for organizing this service. I also want to extend our gratitude to those who were responsible for this afternoon’s music. George Matthew, the college Carillonneur, Jesse Bruchac and his beautiful native flute, and the Middlebury College Choir. You will be hearing the words of wisdom that we start our classes with every time they begin with us. You are going to be hearing them again today. Reflect on them four years later more deeply, more compassionately, and keep them in your hearts. [ Silence ] [ Foreign language spoken ]
Female 1: Happy is the person who finds wisdom, the person who attains understanding. Her value in trade is better than silver, her yield greater than gold. She is more precious than rubies. All of your goods cannot equal her. In her right hand is length of days. In her left, riches and honor. Her ways are pleasant ways and all her paths peaceful. She is a tree of life to those who grasp her, and whoever holds on to her is happy. The Lord founded this Earth by wisdom. God established the heavens by understanding. By their knowledge, the depths burst apart, and the skies distilled dew. [ Silence ] [ Singing in foreign language ]
Female 2: In this world, there is no purifier like wisdom. In time, one who is once self-perfected by yoga finds that wisdom in the self. With wisdom as the highest goal, controlling the senses and filled with trust, one reaches wisdom. There, with wisdom reached, one goes quickly to the highest place. [ Silence ] [ Foreign language spoken ] [ Flute music playing ] [ Applause ] [ Silence ] [ Foreign language spoken ]
Female 3: Who among you are wise and understanding whether good manner of life, let them demonstrate their deeds and wisdom’s meekness. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in hearts, do not boast and lie against the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, the one that is Earth-bound and spiritual demonic. For where there is jealousy and selfish ambition there is disorder in every kind of mean practice. But the wisdom from above is, first of all, pure. Then it is peaceable, gentle, open to persuasion. It is filled with mercy and with good fruits. It is not divided. It is not insincere. But the fruit that is righteousness is found in peace by the makers of peace. [ Silence ] [ Singing in foreign language ]
Male 1: You who believe, give charitably from the good things you have acquired and that we have produced for you from the earth. Do not give away the bad things that you yourself would only accept with your eyes closed. Remember that God is self-sufficient, worthy of all praise. Satan threatens you with the prospect of poverty and commands you to do foul deeds. God promises you His forgiveness and His abundance. God is limitless and all-knowing, and He gives wisdom to whomever He will. Whoever is given wisdom has truly been given much good, but only those with insight bear this in mind. [ Silence ] [ Music ] [ Applause ] [ Silence ] [ Foreign language spoken ]
Female 4: When students today fail to make progress, where is the fault? The fault lies in the fact that they don’t have faith in themselves. If you don’t have faith in yourself, then you’ll be forever in a hurry, trying to keep up with everything around you. You’ll be twisted and turned by whatever environment you’re in, and you can never move freely. But if you can just stop this mind that goes rushing around, moment by moment, looking for something, you’ll be no different from the patriarchs and Buddhas. [ Silence ]
Female 5: I want to talk about dreaming. Not the activity of the sleeping brain, but rather the activity of an awake and alert one, not idle, wishful speculation, but engaged, directed, daytime vision, about entrance into another space, someone else’s situation, sphere, projection if you like. By dreaming, the cell permits intimacy without the risk of being the other. And this intimacy that comes from pointed imagining should precede all of our decision-making, all of our cause-mongering, and our actions. We’re in a mess, you know, and we have got to get out. We should visualize, imagine, dream up, and enter the other before we presume to solve the problems of ours. We might as well dream the world as it ought to be. [ Silence ] [ Music ] [ Applause ] [ Silence ]
Laurie L. Patton: This is a poignant moment for me, as it is unexpectedly my last Baccalaureate with you all. And so that is something I share with you. In a way, we are graduating together, and we are thinking about how Middlebury will take shape in our memories. But let me describe for you now, as I have on many other occasions, the way you have shaped Middlebury. As I look at all that you have done since you began here, there is no doubt in my mind that you are fully prepared to take life on. Here are some numbers: five Fulbright winners, two NSF Graduate Research Fellows, an Udall Scholar, a Truman Scholar, a Goldwater Scholar, a Holling Scholar, two Critical Language Scholars, and two Gilman Scholars. A hundred and fifty-five of you were spring student symposium presenters, 90 were summer research assistants, 53 of you were peer tutors, 26 of you are senior peer writing tutors, not only providing tutoring to thousands over their collective years of work, but you’ve been mentors and researchers and trainers in writing pedagogy. You are varsity athletes that have been part of 18 NESCAC championship teams, and let’s go for those women tomorrow, and seven NCAA championship teams. Eight of you are All-Americans, three of you are CSC Academic All-Americans, one of you is an NCAA Elite 90 winner, and two of you are NESCAC championship relay winners. And many others of you participate in club sports, from crew to rugby to ultimate to water polo, perhaps with less recognition on the national stage, but with no less passion and pride. And there’s what you have accomplished as individuals and in small groups. You have been college access mentors, helping Mid Union High School students navigate the college process, language and motion volunteers, helping to support global awareness and curiosity and intercultural competence, helping making sure folks could even get to their high schools. You have been sustainable solutions lab workers. You’ve established the EcoReps program. And you have been helping sustainable practices throughout all of Middlebury. You have rewilded 300 acres of our campus grounds and connected to the Knoll. You have collaborated with International Christian University as an international translation team, extending the stories and testimonials of Japanese Americans incarcerated as a result of World War II. And you have extended this work in the Go For Broke Torchbearers program. You served in over 38 community leadership roles during your Mid years. You established Civics in Action, that fosters civic engagement and participation in policy and governance. You led our alternative break programs. You completed privilege and poverty summer internships. You received cross-cultural community engagement grants to create partnerships for the common good, including a Conservation Heritage-Turambe in Rwanda and Turtle and Coastal Conservation Assistance and Education in Zanzibar. And you challenged us to be a better Middlebury community, to be better about isolation protocols, to be better about responding to wars, to be better about environmental justice as part of our Energy 2028 plan, and to engage with you as you protested. That is who you are. You may know that I also think about the essential character of particular classes when I have addressed them at Baccalaureate. I have even given them names. The Feb ‘23 Class were dancers, people who had pivoted so much in response to difficult circumstances that they had become dancers. The May Class of 2022 I called recovery artists, people who knew what kind of community it took to survive through COVID and then to rebuild as all communities do through COVID. The June Class of 2023, last year, were people emerging from the isolation. So what would I say of you, 2024? It’s super clear. You are the people of the eclipse. [ Audience laughter ] You are people who have known unexpected, even inexplicable darkness and then have found ways to emerge back into the light. You know this in your bones, but it bears repeating that your entire high school graduation was eclipsed by the pandemic. I am so happy that you are going to have one here. [ Applause ] Keeping that joy in your heart, remember four years ago? You came to us sort of in the usual schlep from the train station or the airport or the drive-through up to Battell or Stewart, waiting in cars behind other families, managing siblings and dogs and the need for lunch. Nope, you came to us through the Virtue Field House with masks. You greeted me and other administrators with a shared knowledge that it was nothing short of a miracle that we were opening and that you were going to college. We handed you a big bag of groceries for your period of isolation and wished you well during that time so that you could come back, test negative, and make sure all was well for you to pursue your classes. At your virtual Baccalaureate in 2020, we also reminded you, in that strange season, that you should have a mug. We asked you to think of it as a talisman for all that Mid had to offer, even in a pandemic. Many of you tell us that you still have it and keep it today. As Mark Orten asked you to do then, you have kept it as a reminder of learning and teaching that has been part of your experience. You saw us that semester making rounds in the middle of the night. You had to curb your natural instincts to meet friends in large gatherings. Your capacity to learn spontaneously in and out of the classroom was eclipsed. Your capacity to play sports was eclipsed. Your capacity to be artistic, to dance and paint and act with others, everything but your love of learning and your determination was in sudden darkness. And you told us in the middle of the year that what you longed for most was spontaneous gathering. So we created a way with a whole bunch of predetermined rules and structures to create spontaneous gathering. You were the ones who learned to silent disco dance on Battell Beach as a way of signaling to your classmates that you were there for them. You figured out a way to be with your teammates even though you didn’t play for almost two years. Then, in those middle years, the restrictions eased. And your last two years of college were a lot more like, quote-unquote, “normal college.” But, of course, there was no return to normalcy. Instead, there were new forms of learning, new forms of social interaction, of having conversations. There were new kinds of exploring, suddenly, when you’re free to move around. But you carried the memories of what you endured. You carried powerful memories of all the losses. And what has been eclipsed will shape you and your imaginations long after you have left this place. That’s the dark side of the eclipse. That’s the darkness that people don’t expect, and that people have feared, humans have feared, for millennia. An eclipse suggests that the darkness will never go away. Ancient people told stories and performed rituals during eclipses to give voice to their experience that the reverse of the natural order was happening. In ancient China, people banged on drums and cymbals because they believed that a dragon was eating the sun. A similar version of that belief existed in India and Peru and parts of Southeast Asia that something demonic was consuming the sun. Ancient Armenians imagined a black planet. In Togo and Benin, the sun and moon were thought to be fighting. And people performed those rituals and chants to get them to stop their battling. I am sure that many of you have felt that way. Whether it was in the dark hours of COVID isolation or the equally demoralizing hours of watching the destruction and civilian casualties in Ukraine, in Israel, and Gaza, or working on an adequate response to climate change when the challenge just felt too big, too impossible and the world not responsive enough to the dire need. You may have felt like something dark was consuming all the light, all the possibility. And you’d do anything to make it go away, to get the sun and the moon to stop fighting. Those who lived in the ancient world felt like you did too. Some Native American peoples felt that the sun had lost its capacity to give light. And the best way to light the sun’s fire again was by sending burning arrows into the sky toward the sun. Ancient Japanese people created bonfires and made large displays of shining jewels to restore the sun to its original luster. During eclipses, people have wanted to give the world back its light. In all that you have done, you, too, have wanted to give the world back its light. We know now that the sun emerges and that an eclipse is nothing short of a miracle if you get to witness it. The gathering of millions across America to watch the eclipse on April 8th was a joyful, awe-inspiring moment. The gathering of Middlebury students, faculty, staff, and neighbors on Battell Beach was even more awe-inspiring. Of course, it was only natural that Middlebury was in the marvelously named path of totality. Let me share the thoughts of eminent journalists and your professors, Bill McKibben and Sue Halpern, as they reported from Middlebury for the New Yorker Eclipse Diaries. A college turns out to be a good place to watch an eclipse. Most of the student body, released from classes, assembled on the lawn around 2:15 p.m., waiting for something to happen. An astrophysicist set up a pinhole camera. A specialist in spacecraft propulsion was taking 10-second, time-lapse images. But when the sun went dark at 3:27 p.m., thought seemed to cease to exist. The students who had been playing frisbee and volleyball fell silent. And when the light came back 55 seconds later, a loud rolling clamor broke across the field. The sun had returned, and all throughout, before and after the darkness, there was a veritable carnival of science and humanities and social sciences and arts on Battell Beach with everyone gathering, with citizen scientists everywhere. In fact, someone told me recently about a project that reminded me of this scene and reminded me of you. It fits you, Middlebury students, perfectly. It’s called SunSketchers. And it facilitates the participation of potentially millions of regular folks to gather virtually and contribute to cosmological knowledge, nothing less than the measurement of the sun. As SunSketcher’s founder states, SunSketcher is an app anyone can use to photograph a solar eclipse. First used on April 8th, we’re now counting down to the next one, August 12th, in 2026. Mass participation will create an incredible database of images that, when analyzed together, could allow scientists to map the sun. We don’t know the shape of the sun? you ask. Nope. Well, not exactly. Scientists have a pretty good idea. But it’s not nearly as precise as it could be. We’re going to change that, measuring the sun’s oblateness to an accuracy of a few parts in a million. This offers an unprecedented opportunity to measure the sun’s shape and, therefore, infer its inner structure. The SunSketcher project will use smartphone observations by citizen scientists situated along the 2,000-mile-long eclipse path from Texas to Maine to reveal that precise shape of the solar disk. The SunSketchers, then, are, to me, much like the people laughing and cheering and providing eclipse education on Battell Beach. SunSketchers are volunteers from the general public. They are all everyday contributors, and in that way, they are also akin to Middlebury’s educational mission. SunSketchers want to involve as large and diverse a group as possible, where every observation will make a valuable contribution to the project. In other words, SunSketchers are measuring the sun, yes, but they are also building hope through building knowledge — building hope through building knowledge, one photograph, one person at a time like you have done at Middlebury. I saw it in your posters in the Undergraduate Research Symposium. I heard it in your account of your summer internships when you returned to us every fall. There was a sense of possibility in your eyes and voices. This hope is not sentimental. It is clear and determined. The kind of hope reflected in Cherokee poet Linda Neal Reising’s prize-winning poem written for the April 8th eclipse. And you have it in your program if you would like to read along. The Reason We Gather for the Solar Eclipse: “It is not because the light pinholes through oak leaves, creating a circus of crescent suns upon the lawn — performers in spangled costumes. It is not to feel the day lose its way, the waning of warmth sending icing fingers to stroke our prickled arms. It is not to see the scenery’s color seeping away to sepia, like a tin-type photograph of unremembered ancestors. It is not hearing the sudden hush of songbirds rushing to roost among the limbs of shadowed pines. It is not observing orb-weaving spiders dismantling their webs, stowing them like returned sailors’ rigging. It is not to keep a date with Venus, spreading her goddess glow, outshining the stars, startled by their daytime awakening. It is not to share the wealth of Bailey’s beads, strung around the Moon or the golden corona crowning the royal Sun. No, we gather for that moment, after totality’s darkness, when we stand, faces upturned, waiting for that brilliant flash of promise, and we think, Ah, yes, this is the way it will be.” Reising describes a world where all the tiny responses to darkness, the spiders putting away their webs, and the birds’ sudden hush are themselves eclipsed by the sun’s return. And that is your story too. You started a college fighting a corona, a virus in the shape of a crown. You ended up by embracing a corona, the outside of the sun, visible in crown-like perfection. You are graduating into a world where all of you will need to be citizen scientists. All of you will need to be SunSketchers. But you are Middlebury, so you already are. As Toni Morrison puts it in your Book of Wisdom, you are already dreaming the world the way it ought to be. Or, as Reising puts it, you will need to think and are already thinking with determination and knowledge and compassion. “Ah, yes, this is the way it will be.” So before you leave us to do that work, you will gather one more time this weekend in hope and celebration. Bill McKibben and Sue Halpern wrote about how, as the sun reemerged from the April 8th eclipse, a loud rolling clamor broke across the field. And tomorrow another kind of loud rolling clamor will break across our fields, your friends and loved ones cheering you on. That clamor is not only celebrating your journey from a dark viral corona in 2020 to a blazing solar one in 2024, it is also celebrating who you will become. As people of the eclipse, as SunSketchers, you will hear many times in your life that sudden hush when hope seems to vanish. But as Middlebury people, you have proven over and over again that you have the strength to persevere beyond that sudden hush, beyond that unexplained darkness and stand witness to the next moment, the moment of hope, when you embrace again that brilliant flash of promise. We need thousands of you to gather in fields and be citizen scientists, to start new festivals, to greet strangers as you did on April 8th on the blanket across the path. So go now and bring Middlebury into the world with your faces upturned in hope. With your mind, your body, your spirit, and your hearts — [ Silence ] — you have the power to help and to heal, the same things that ancient peoples longed for as they shot arrows of fire at the sun and begged the celestial bodies to make peace. You will never be strangers to moments of unexpected and inexplicable darkness. You’ve already lived them. And you will have the wisdom, like all SunSketchers do, to stay and to wait and to watch. And then, in the bigness of your hearts, you know how to embrace that thin sliver of light reemerging. You will describe it. You will study it. You will film it. You will measure it. You will sing it. You will tell new stories because you are Middlebury, people of the eclipse. We know that you will carry us through darkness and show us again how to sustain and light the world. Congratulations. [ Applause ] [ Silence ] [ Music ] [ Silence ] [ Applause ] [ Silence ] [ Foreign language spoken ]
Jesse Bowman Bruchac: With each new day, be thankful for the opportunities it offers you. And, like the sun, become the light of the world. Let your light shine before others so that they will be inspired by your good deeds everywhere. [Foreign language] [ Applause ] [ Music ]