Hanover — More than 1,000 graduating seniors and hundreds of advanced degree recipients flashed smiles and exchanged hugs with family and friends at Dartmouth College’s commencement ceremony here Sunday, but only after braving some chilling winds and words.
Dartmouth is “a college founded for the education of native youth” that in the first 200 years after its creation in 1769 graduated only 19 native students, said Kimonee Burke, a member of the class of 2018 and the president of Native Americans at Dartmouth.
Burke gave the official welcome to about 11,500 people who gathered in Hanover — “the homeland of the Abenaki people,” Burke noted — for an occasion that was both festive and sobering, with blue sky overhead but gray clouds on the horizon.
Burke said that more than 1,100 native people had attended Dartmouth since John Kemeny, who became president in 1970, “rededicated (the college) to educating and serving the indigenous people.” That undertaking “remains a worthy and necessary venture today,” she said.
The cloud cover was nearly complete and a gusting wind was stirring by the time Leybah Gbowee, a Liberian human rights activist who received the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, finished the main commencement address. “Our world is upside down,” she said. “We are slowly losing our humanity.”
Gbowee called her address an “Open Mind Challenge” but made it clear that it was not a celebration of progress. “We seem to be going backwards instead of forwards,” she said.
Gbowee began by asking for a moment of silence for the victims of the Sunday morning’s mass shooting in Orlando, which she said was the 671st terror attack in the world already in 2016. By the time commencement ended, attendees glancing at their smartphones had seen headlines that the day’s death toll in Florida had reached 50.
Speakers sought to help graduates and their supporters transcend the unseasonable chill and uncomfortable reminders of the world’s harshness and celebrate the occasion. “It’s time to make some noise because this place is too cold,” Gbowee said after she accepted an honorary degree and prepared to start her speech.
President Phil Hanlon chimed in during his concluding remarks to the graduates: “Even though the day is cool and cloudy, please know that our hearts are warm and sunny.”
Hanlon also echoed Gbowee’s pleas for open-mindedness. “Let your own opinions evolve,” he said.
Hanlon then asked Angus King, a U.S. senator from Maine who is not affiliated with either major party who was present attending the 50th reunion of the Dartmouth class of 1966, to stand as a “role model.”
Hanlon also used the example of the grandfather of a childhood friend. The grandfather was extremely conservative but sought to keep tabs on those he disagreed with by reading the Village Voice and Rolling Stone, two publications not usually associated with the right.
The mention of Rolling Stone seemed a “weird coincidence” to Andrew Lohse, who a few minutes earlier had received his bachelor’s degree and — like the other graduates — exchanged a brief handshake with Hanlon.
Lohse, who entered Dartmouth with the class of 2012, was the main source for a scathing 2012 Rolling Stone expose of fraternity hazing and sexual abuse at Dartmouth. Lohse, who had been suspended and then on medical leave, returned a year ago to a school he called “really awful at times but usually great” to complete the education that he termed “the strength of the place.”
The somber black robes of the graduates provided a backdrop that highlighted garments and accessories of some graduates that made ceremonial, fraternal or political statements.
In one hand Felicia Teter carried a walking stick showing her membership in the Phoenix senior society. In her other hand she held a pink flamingo — emblematic of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights, she said. Teter also wore on her back a placard proclaiming “fight for faculty of color” as an expression of support for Aimee Bahng, an Asian-American professor recently denied tenure in Dartmouth’s English department.
Caroline Sohr also carried a senior society walking stick and wore a lei from her sorority. Mene Ukueberuwa wore a sash of the Black Alumni of Dartmouth Association, an organization that describes itself as “a supportive community of alumni and students that celebrates the diversity of the black experience at Dartmouth.”
Others didn’t wear robes at all. Rachael Rhee, who participated in the Army Reserve Officer Training program while at Dartmouth, wore the dress blue uniform of a second lieutenant as she walked with her classmates. Rhee, who studied computer science and English, will go to Fort Campbell in Kentucky to join the signal branch of the chemical corps in the 101st Airborne Division.
Spencer Lone Fight wore the traditional regalia of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara nation complemented by a sash from the Native Americans at Dartmouth organization.
Many were challenged by the unseasonably cool air. Debbie Martino, of Harrison, N.Y., who was there to see her son Kyle receive a bachelor’s degree in economics, huddled under a Dartmouth-branded blanket that she bought Saturday after checking the weather forecasts “for the past two weeks.”
A few feet away, Kira Beaudette, a sophomore, sat bravely on the ground wearing a short, bare-shouldered sun dress, waiting to see her boyfriend, Matthew Wheeler, graduate. Beaudette said she had also checked the weather report, but that didn’t persuade her to give up her resolve to wear “something bright.”
Sean O’Brien, a certified physician’s assistant at Dick’s House, the campus clinic, said that at an event where heat had posed health challenges in some years the coolness had eased demand for services at the first aid tent — as evidenced by the seven bags of ice that sat unopened on the back of a John Deere utility vehicle.
Jonathan Vandermause, who had a double major in physics and mathematics and plans to pursue a doctorate in physics at Harvard, gave the valedictory address. Vandemause recalled the words (but not the name or face) of a professor who told a group of incoming freshmen that “success requires serendipity.”
That means the capacity to gain “valuable things not sought for,” said Vandermause, who was one of eight graduates who earned the title of valedictorian by completing their undergraduate studies with a perfect 4.0 grade point average.
As evidence of the power of that unconventional roadmap, Vandermause described the accomplishments of John Michael Conway, a Princeton mathematics professor who achieved theoretical breakthroughs while inventing games. Yet Vandermause’s endorsement of a whimsical approach was measured. “I’m not suggesting we throw paychecks to the wind,” he said.
That advice didn’t seem necessary for his fellow valedictorians. Three plan to join Wall Street investment firms, a fourth is headed for a large business consulting firm and two are headed to technology companies.
That seemed to leave only Vandermause, who will become a grad student in the fall, and Sarah Waltcher, who has signed up to teach sixth grade science, with short-term paycheck worries among the class of 2016’s top performers.
Hanlon said that tradition entitled him to have the final word at Commencement, but this exhortation from Gbowee seemed most timely and indelible: “Cross borders, tear down walls, enter spaces and you might just be surprised at what good you might find in those unknown spaces.”
Rick Jurgens can be reached at 603-727-3229 or at rjurgens@vnews.com.
Dartmouth College Class of 2016
Graduates from the Upper Valley:
Ryan B. Amos, Etna; Sarah K. August, West Lebanon; Andrew L. Beaubien, Hanover; Nicholas A. Bernold, Hanover; Joshua D. Cox, Claremont; Beichen Dai, Hanover; Jessica S. Eaton, Claremont; Dominic L. Filiano, Lebanon; Jeffrey K. Foster, New London; Callan R. George, South Royalton; Daniel E. Gorman, Etna; Eric D. Jayne, Hanover; Reilly J. Johnson, Bradford, Vt.; William P. Kerin, Lyme; Victoria E. Nevel, Lebanon; Jingya Qiu, Hanover; Donald R. Rains, West Lebanon; Richard P. Rebman, Etna; Faith L. Sylvia, Plainfield; Zoe I. Vesley-Gross, Hanover.