Speakers, sans Secretary-General, inspire graduates

It was a humid, overcast Mother's Day, but that did not stop an estimated 18,000 people from watching as the University conferred 3,558 undergraduate, graduate and professional degrees Sunday.

Laryngitis prevented United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, scheduled speaker and honorary degree recipient, from delivering the commencement address at the University's 151st commencement ceremony. Students still received his message when President Nan Keohane read selections from Annan's prepared remarks.

A number of Sunday's honorary degree recipients advised the May, September and December graduates to take a more global view as they took their next steps into the world. Not surprisingly, the United States' recent war with Iraq seemed to be on many of the speakers' minds.

In Annan's prepared speech, he wrote that it is no longer possible to think only in terms of one's own country.

"Issues that once seemed very far away are very much in your backyard," he wrote. "What happens in South America or Southern Africa - from democratic advances to deforestation to the fight against AIDS - can affect your lives here in North Carolina. And your choices here - what you buy, how you vote - can resound far away. As someone once said about water pollution, we all live downstream."

Annan also applauded the graduates for turning an anemic job market to their own benefit.

"I understand that many of you have used these uncertain times to explore avenues you might not have considered before, such as teaching or other forms of public service in troubled communities in the United States or in some of the world's developing countries," he wrote. "With the ink on your diplomas barely dry, you are coming face to face with the unexpected - the turns of events that engage your passions in ways you never could have predicted or thought possible."

The other four honorary degree recipients also offered brief remarks at the ceremony, sharing their personal experiences and often tying them to contemporary issues and events. This year, honorary degrees were awarded to U.S. Navy Admiral Frank "Skip" Bowman; artist, author and feminist Judy Chicago; physician and scientist Dr. Richard Klausner and dance leader Charles Reinhart.

He told graduates that in an age of AIDS, SARS and bioterrorism, "it is only science practiced openly and freely in societies that value knowledge, that value and sustain openness and human dignity, that will protect us all from nature's bioterrorism and from man's bioterrorism."

For a marked change of pace during Sunday's commencement ceremony, Reinhart spoke on the power of dance and performed a tribal rain dance as the audience looked with a mix of amusement and apprehension at the cloudy skies.

While most of the speakers asked graduates to look to the future and the roles they will play in a world Annan said is "at a critical juncture," this year's selected student speaker, Terry Schuster, Trinity '03, narrated a story of loss and remembrance as students moved to the next stage of life.

"You were out with your friends the other night, and when the bar stopped serving drinks, you all went back to your place," Schuster said. "Your dorm or house or apartment was already starting to look like it did when you first moved in.... And you thought to yourself that you would never again have this group of people around you in this place, and that even if you did, it could never again feel like this. Why does this night have to end?"

Schuster added, however, that graduation also means taking a new outlook on life. "You might hear, 'Today is the first day of the rest of your life,'" he said. "And although the phrase itself is stupid, and you've heard it a thousand times before, it seems to mean something to you today."