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WELLESLEY,
Mass. -- Rain and thunder couldn't dampen the
spirits of the 579 members of the Wellesley College Class
of 2004 as they received their bachelor of arts degrees
at the 126th Commencement Exercises on Friday, May 28 on
the Wellesley, Mass., campus.
The
Commencement speaker, award-winning author Toni Morrison,
told the graduates that while the future of the world is
not totally in the control of "finite humans," they
should do their best to protect it. "Now that’s
a heavy burden to be placed on one generation by a member
of another generation because it's a responsibility we
ought to share," she said. "Not save the world,
but simply to love it, meaning don’t hurt it, it’s
already beaten and scoured and gasping for breath."
For
those who feel their college years are the best times
of their lives, Morrison said, "If these are indeed
the best years of your life, you do have my condolences
because there is nothing, believe me, more satisfying,
more gratifying than true adulthood. The adulthood that
is the span of life before you. The process of becoming
one is not inevitable. Its achievement is a difficult beauty,
an intensely hard won glory, which commercial forces and
cultural vapidity should not be permitted to deprive you
of. "
Maggie
O'Grady, a senior from Yonkers, N.Y., served as the 2004
student Commencement speaker, a position of honor
since alumna Hillary Rodham Clinton delivered the first
such speech in 1969. O'Grady told her classmates to use "one
thing" they most cherish as they venture into the
world: "Focus on one thing you want to take with you – one
thing that Wellesley does better than anyplace else, or
one thing that you did particularly well while you were
here – one thing you learned, or were exposed to,
or had fun with that you can carry with you and use when
you are building your own utopia and your life – when
you are out there trying to make this world of ours just
a little bit better – because right now it needs
a lot of help. And that's enough." Among other accomplishments,
O'Grady organized a Shakespeare-reading marathon this year.
She will be a teacher through Teach for America in New
Mexico next year.
President Diana Chapman Walsh, in her traditional "Charge
to the Class," advised graduates to pursue happiness
as a most important goal. "As the world’s great
philosophical systems and religions attest – and
as we know from our own experience – reaching out
to others in kindness and empathy enhances inner peace," she
said. "In fact, Aristotle defined happiness as 'an
activity of the soul that expresses virtue.' Far from being
a transitory feeling or emotional state, happiness was,
he believed, the culmination of a life well lived, one
guided by our reason, the one quality that makes us human,
that defines our shared human history and can shape our
shared human project. What could be more important, especially
now?"
Since 1875, Wellesley College has been a leader in providing
an excellent liberal-arts education for women who will
make a difference in the world. Its 500-acre campus near
Boston is home to 2,300 undergraduate students from all
50 states and 68 countries. For more on Wellesley's 2004
Commencement, go to www.wellesley.edu/PublicAffairs/Commencement/index.html.
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