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By mid-morning the day after Commencement, a computer virus was infecting hard drives across the campuses. Just 24 hours earlier, commencement speaker Ray Bradbury had told the crowd gathered in Badgley Garden to junk computers and return to the traditional, solid instruments of communication such as—gasp!—pen and paper.
A celebrated writer of fantasy and science fiction, one assumes Bradbury would embrace all things technological, but he prefers a typewriter to Windows. His approach to writing may be considered antiquated, but his ideas have always been ahead of their time. Eyeing CMC's Class of 2001, Bradbury asked for a show of hands of graduates who had read his books in high school. When half lifted their arms, Bradbury smiled. "No wonder I am here," he said. "You're all my children." The father of The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451 then commissioned his progeny to go out and "live at the top of your lungs, from this day forward," a challenge well spent on CMC's latest class of future leaders.
Bradbury wrote about raising children among the stars more than a decade before Neil Armstrong landed on the moon in 1969. Bradbury recalled his emotions on that historic day. "It was the greatest night in the history of mankind. I cried all night long in joy." The author was confident that CMC's graduates would see the colonization of Mars, unfathomable in 1950, when he foreshadowed homesteads on the Red Planet in his Martian Chronicles.
CMC's 54th annual Commencement unfolded in traditional form. The ribbon of robed graduates and faculty was led by economics and accounting professor Marc Massoud, this year's David Huntoon Senior Teaching Award winner. Watson Fellow David Ragsdale '01 and valedictorian Richard Johnson '01 gave an animated rendition of the Latin Salutation—Ragsdale with his tongue-rolling Rs ("prrraesidentem!"), and Johnson with his dramatic gesturing.
Senior class president Eve Filip, who enrolls at Columbia Law School in the fall, recounted an amusing list of things "learned" at CMC, such as: "Caffeine is the sixth food group"; "There are more sprinklers than students on campus"; and "There is only so much one can do to entertain yourself during a power outage."
Bradbury followed, using the galaxy as a metaphor for students' unlimited opportunity. He was never able to afford college himself, but spent his youth holed away in libraries, reading the classics. Not surprisingly, he views libraries as the "brains of the campus," and is equally impassioned about the job of any teacher, which is to "make people stand like exclamation points." But on more than one occasion, he shared his skepticism about the Internet. "Stop chatting with morons 3,000 miles away!" he pleaded. "There are plenty of morons right next to you!"
The author's views about our roles in life correlated with President Pamela Gann's advice to graduates. Bradbury said our debt as the "audience of the universe" is to "pay back for this incredible gift of life." Gann then charged the gowned seniors "to share their education with society" and to commit their efforts in the examination of major issues, including geopolitical stability, medical ethics and genetics, multiculturalism, and intergenerational questions.
"You will determine whether this multicultural society will stand disunited or whether it will evolve and be shaped into an inclusive and civil polity that lives up to the creed of liberty and justice for all," Gann said. "My generation is counting on your generation for a very great deal."
Degrees were awarded by William L. Ascher, dean of the faculty; Gann; Massoud; and Robert J. Lowe '62, chairman of the Board of Trustees. Christiana Dominguez '01 closed the ceremonies with the benediction.
Following ceremonies, the 256 graduates joined family and friends for a champagne reception on Parents Field.
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