chuck houston III: June 5 - 7, 2007 Harvard Commencement

Thursday, June 28, 2007

June 5 - 7, 2007 Harvard Commencement

Working at a college is kind of surrealistic, compared to working at an industrial business. The thing is that 1/4 of your students leave automatically every year. But what an accomplishment for the graduating Seniors! It's just a bittersweet experience for those of us left behind. I really like the students a lot, they include beautiful African singers, ROTC guys, great athletes, young adults with various handicaps, great people from all over Asia, smarty-pants types, drinkers, flirts, musicians- I could go on. So, I always attend Commencement events each year to celebrate mostly, but also to reflect on the passage of these amazing young people who I, somehow, have stumbled into having the great privilege to learn with. The scene below is actually the class photo for the Harvard College Class of 2007 taken on June 5. There's about 1600 or so graduates, most of whom are all crammed on the steps of our main library, Widener Library. The camera guy (just right of center in white shirt) was pretty well-equipped. He had a panoramic camera mounted on a little servo-motor which swept back and forth, taking these amazing panoramic photos. So my photo below, is a photo of a photo being taken.

Here is the actual photo:

The day before graduation is called Class Day, and it is also the day of the Commissioning for the ROTC students. Below is one of my great students from this year Rob Huefner. Rob was in my Social Psychology section last fall and was also a resident of Lowell House. He's a 2nd lieutenant in the Army now, and will be trained to be an intelligence officer. The photo below shows Rob and me just after his commissioning on June 6:

Bill Clinton was the featured speaker that afternoon.

I was reminded that Clinton totally rules. Here's an excerpt of what he said to the graduating Seniors in his Class Day Speech:

"So with this Harvard degree and your incredible minds and your spirits that I’ve gotten a little sense of today, this gives you virtually limitless possibilities. But you have to decide how to think about all this and what to do with your own life in terms of what you really think. I hope that you will share Martin Luther King’s dream, embrace Mandela’s spirit of reconciliation, support Bono’s concern for the poor and follow Mother Teresa’s life into some active service. Ordinary people have more power to do public good than ever before because of the rise of non-governmental organizations, because of the global media culture, because of the Internet, which gives people of modest means the power, if they all agree, to change the world. When former President Bush and I were asked to work on the tsunami, before we did the Katrina work, Americans, many of whom could not find the Maldives or Sri Lanka on a map, gave $1.2 billion to tsunami aid. Thirty percent of our households gave. Half of them gave over the Internet, which means you don’t even have to be rich to change the world if enough people agree with you. But we have to do this. Citizen service is a tradition in our country about as old as Harvard, and certainly older than the government. "

Here's a link to the complete transcript of his speech.

Here's an article about the speech, taken from the Harvard Gazette

I was really impressed with Clinton. Speaking of impressive people, Here's a photo (below) of my buddy Mike Daris. I snapped this little rehearsal shot the night before graduation while Mike was trying on his Cap and Gown.

Hey, below is my buddy Peter O'Malley who, like me, is a Crusader from one of the greatest undergraduate liberal arts colleges in the world. Well, now Pete is a Crimson Crusader because he received his Master's Degree from Harvard Extension School on June 7.

Below is Coach Crompton and me. Hey we're both planning to graduate in 2008 - Sarah, you are too!

Bill Gates made the Commencement speech. He credited his mother with informing him that “from those to whom much is given, much is expected.” Here's a link to the transcript of his speech.

Below is a picture from dinner with the O'Malleys.

On the left is Peter's wife Jodi Simpson, and on the right is her friend Fiona Tucker. Fiona lives in London. Below you can see Rick, Peter, and me. We all went to Holy Cross. Thus, we rule. Peter (red shirt) and I shared a similar experience at Holy Cross: we both lived in Wheeler 109. That is, we both lived in the same room, albeit 18 years apart.