Now that the commencements for the class of 2022 have concluded, there’s been a little time for reflection. We had a large group of distinguished commencement speakers. Some of their themes were common to thinking ahead to the future… “you didn’t get here alone;” “the world needs your leadership.”
There were others, however, that seemed specific to our times. Most all speakers noted that this class faced challenges unlike those of earlier classes. They experienced a global pandemic, which has killed over 1 million people in this country alone, more than any armed conflict, more than that in the 1918 pandemic. In March, 2020, they were forced off-campus, into a remote learning protocol. For undergraduates in the Class of 2022, then in their sophomore year, this most often meant returning to their homes, removed from their college friends. For PhD students this often meant abrupt disruption of their research, as laboratories and archives closed or heavily reduced their access.
The speakers praised the resilience revealed in the graduates completion of their degrees. Some noted that the experience will serve them well in the future. Life itself, they noted, will give each of them other setbacks and failures, from which they will need to courageously bounce back. Several speakers told stories from their own lives of when they faced devastating disruptions to their ambitions and called on inner strength to overcome them. They urged the graduates to remember their achievements in the face of obstacles; they repeatedly noted the need for the graduates to code their resilience as a key feature of their character.
Other comments paid attention to the unusual volume of challenging problems facing the globe – racism; inequities in wealth, housing, education, health care access; climate change and environmental degradation; the rise of authoritarianism and threats to the future of democracy; stark political cleavages that disrupt intergroup relations. Here many speakers turned to the Jesuit values animating Georgetown. They called on the graduates to draw on the lessons from their formation at Georgetown to tackle these problems. One speaker asked the question of whether evil is more powerful than good. He cited Desmond Tutu’s answer – no, evil is not stronger than good; evil is just better organized. He urged the graduates to call on resource of “people for others” to organize for good.
Others noted the need for empathy and meeting others where they currently stand. One noted that doing the work is more important that feeling the satisfaction of a new degree from a selective university. Many of the problems require seeing the world through a different lens than our own identity and education would dictate. That requires many of the skills key to “community in diversity,” “interreligious dialogue,” “magnanimity and humility,” and other Ignatian notions.
Finally, there was another contrast to prior years. The enthusiasm of the graduates was off the normal scale. When the faculty entered the senior convocation, for example, the students were clapping and hollering at unprecedented volume. They didn’t stop when the podium party was seated. Every mildly positive adjective enunciated by a speaker produced loud applause and more screams. It was hot. They must have had little sleep, given the festivities the night before. But the adrenaline seemed abundant in the tent. They seemed to revel in being together, for once, in a conventional ritual undeterred by the world’s troubles. They seemed ready to tackle all the problems plaguing the world.
We should watch the accomplishments of the classes of 2020-2024, those groups of students whose higher education was disrupted by COVID. We all hope the challenges that they conquered will give them a robustness to trials they will undoubtedly face in their lives.