Penn Baccalaureate 2014 |
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May 27, 2014, Volume 60, No. 35 |
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Baccalaureate Remarks given Sunday, May 18, 2014 by Penn President Amy Gutmann
A Glorious Beginning
Parents and families, friends and colleagues, welcome to Penn’s Baccalaureate Ceremony! My warmest congratulations to the great Class of 2014, whom we’re gathered here to honor.
Commencement weekend is a wonderful and exciting time. These are days of well-earned celebration filled with many traditions, some of which are quite ancient.
One such tradition—the Commencement ceremony itself—was in ages past nothing short of an endurance test. More than two hundred years ago, Penn’s Class of 1789 filed into a sweltering hot church house on Race Street for a Commencement that lasted two whole days.
It was July, and the graduates sweated through not one or two, but seventeen speeches in all. Some were in Latin.
I think I see some of you sweating now at just the thought.
Fortunately for all of us, our traditions have evolved, and we’ve learned a thing or two. We know now that when it comes to Commencement weekend ceremonies, briefer is better and suffering does not refine the spirit.
This baccalaureate ceremony we celebrate today, however, is intended to refine the spirit and uplift the soul. It derives from the medieval custom of honoring Bachelor degree candidates prior to the awarding of their degrees. This is a quieter and more intimate opportunity to reflect.
Our students—this remarkable Class of 2014—have learned and grown and advanced in so many ways in the past four years. They are an enormous and potent force for good that we are about to release on the world.
This is our opportunity to give thoughtful attention to all they are capable of achieving—and our heartfelt thanks for all they have meant to us in the years leading up to this moment.
Members of the Class of 2014: an ending is in sight, but so too is a glorious beginning.
On behalf of all of the University of Pennsylvania, I applaud you for what you have achieved.
I honor you for the good that you will do.
And I accept your thanks for not delivering my remarks in Latin.
Congratulations and enjoy.
Related: Baccalaureate Address by The Reverend Kirbyjon Caldwell, WG’77, senior pastor, Windsor Village United Methodist Church, Three Simple Concepts: Character, Courage and Creativity
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