COMMENCEMENT SPEECH

Joseph Raymond

May, 2003

It doesn’t seem so long ago that some of us graduated high school, and I suppose that that’s because it wasn’t. Only two years for those of us who came here right off the bat and kept on schedule. The rest of us can still relate. This ceremony is similar to that one. But there are differences, too.

We graduated from High School in a ceremony that meant we were ready to start doing whatever it is we were going to do, whether that meant working, going to college, joining the military, or all three. In the today’s world, a high school diploma or its equivalent is really nothing more than the educational common denominator: a place to start. We had come to a threshold, and that commencement ceremony symbolized the fact that we had to jump. Therein lies the real difference between this graduation and that one. We’re not here to announce that it’s time for us to do something so much as we are here to proclaim publicly that we are doing something, and this piece of paper, this diploma, is proof.

That alone is more than I would have imagined for myself just two years ago, and I know I speak for a lot of the other graduates in saying that. But that’s part of what’s special about Holy Cross. There’s a mixture of students here that would rival that of any school in the country.

I was accepted to Holy Cross as a member of the Conditional Acceptance Program, a program which requires a certain level of scholarship during a probationary period prior to fall semester. CAP students share the rather dubious distinction of having graduated High School with a Grade Point Average under the 2.0 mark.

There was another summer program here at Holy Cross that catered to a slightly different student. It was called the Accelerated Honors Program. These students spent a solid year under a full course load. They received their Associates degree after one year and transferred elsewhere as juniors. These students were highly motivated, and academically very strong. The CAP students, needless to say, were not.

But as we all discovered in those first few days, the powers that be at Holy Cross didn’t seem to note such disparities when they assigned us our rooms. We all lived in the same hall, the same rooms even… Cappers and Honors students alike. Now the college wasn’t so egalitarian on matters of gender, but that’s another thing entirely.

The point is that our living situation forced us to mix and interact. Two groups of people who clearly ran in different circles in high school were thrown into a situation in which they really had no one but each other.

It was an eye-opener for both groups, and we influenced each other heavily over the next six weeks (although I suspect that the influence the Honors kids had on us was a little more positive than ours on them). We learned from each other and about each other. We learned the importance of accepting the responsibility demanded of us. And as for them, well, I’m sure they must have learned something from us…

They’re not here today. They’ve already graduated. But they were part of that first Summer Session, where the overall character of the Holy Cross student body was made most explicitly clear to me.

When that first fall semester began it became clear that this phenomenon was not exclusive to the summer. With the influx of students at the semester’s start the same mix was writ large.

Holy Cross happens to be in the unique position of being a viable option to students at both ends of the spectrum. It’s not beneath the valedictorian, but at the same time it’s not totally out of reach for the recovering burnout or the reformed slacker. Most schools are one or the other.

Of course this in itself is nothing exclusive to our little corner of academia; I don’t presume to suggest that there aren’t other colleges that can boast the same thing, but Holy Cross is truly unique in that it can boast such diversity in a small, private, Catholic setting.

Sure, Downtown Central Community College might be more diverse, but ask somebody what time Mass is and note their confusion. At Holy Cross you don’t even have to ask. There are enough signs around campus that only the blind have a legitimate excuse for missing Mass. And I’ve heard that a certain Campus Minister is learning Braille…

These elements combine to express a truly Christian idea; that in spite of our differences, we’re all in this thing together.

Being here tonight suggests a need to formally say goodbye to the College that has guided us from wherever we came to wherever is next. We may not realize that that’s why we’re here, but think about it. That’s what it all comes down to, what this ceremony really means.

But I believe I speak for those of us here today – those of us who found in this place a reason to say goodbye – when I say that Holy Cross College has been more than merely a stepping stone on the way to some loftier educational goal. It has been an education in and of itself.

I learned things at Holy Cross that I could not have leaned anywhere else. I’m not just talking about the factual stuff either, the stuff you can be tested on. I’m talking about the other things; about people and God and life, the stuff you can’t prove you know except by how you live your life.

For me, Holy Cross is the place where I became something of my own creation; something I was proud of. It’s the place where I decided to care about things like my education and like my soul.

For me, Holy Cross is the place where I met some of the best people in the world, my all-time favorites, some of the people with whom I know I’ll be friends for the rest of my life.

For me, Holy Cross is the place where some of my most indelible memories are set. A place inextricably tied to some major life events. I’ll never forget that I was at Holy Cross College on September 11, 2001. We watched the crisis in Iraq unfold from this campus.

And then there are the good folks in Campus Ministry who, between the retreats and Eucharistic Adoration, seem to just be perpetually recruiting. I believe Mr. Kloska could convince Satan himself to go on a Spes Unica retreat.

Our wonderful faculty leave a lasting impression. For instance, I’ll never forget the many faces of Br. Bob. He conducts the first class of each semester as the hard-nosed, no-nonsense Commandant Livernois but then teaches History all semester as the bleeding-heart, share-the-wealth Comrade Livernois.

There’s Midnight Basketball, always rife with controversy. Be it in the officiating or the actual play there’s always something up. Ask somebody from one of the halls that lost the tournament how it went and you’ll likely get accounts of Machiavellian political maneuvering at work behind every call, pacts with the devil, and how the forces of darkness conspired against his team. It’s inconceivable that they just lost. “Not a chance,” he’ll remind you, “we practiced.”

And there’s the complaints. One of the favorite pastimes of the Holy Cross student, perhaps the one activity that has engaged them all, is complaining about the school.

When we first got here it was like a way to show that we were better than this place, unimpressed; like we were just passing time here until we were ready to leave the suckers in the dust and go ahead with the Oxford plan we’d been putting off.

Apparently this school is way “too small.” That’s one of the most popular complaints, usually voiced by a guy whose been penalized for missing class or something. He’d then go on about whatever big University is nearest his hometown and how much better it is there: “At State man? They got classes so big the professors don’t even know if you’re there or not. They don’t even know your name.” And we’d ooh and ahh like a bunch of primitives around a fire, our Shaman spinning yarns about a wonderful, faraway place called the State School. It was his Big Rock Candy Mountain.

But I don’t think any of us really meant any of it.

The complaints really didn’t turn up this semester, and I think that’s because we all knew that our time here was slowly winding down. I’ve had more than one conversation just this week that began with the words, “You know, I think I’m really gonna miss this place.”

I think we all know that there’s something special in the community here, and I think we all have started to realize that there are a lot of things we are never going to have anywhere else; things that our friends at the big schools and the state schools don’t have as part of their college experience.

We can go to Confession virtually any time we want to. Fr. Mark’s posted in that office of his nearly every time I walk by, like a soldier in on a rampart, ready to lower the drawbridge of God’s forgiveness and mercy for anybody who wants in.

And daily mass! There’s something to be said for a place where you can walk from the chapel and into your classroom to hear a lecture from the same guy from whom you just heard Mass. There’s something poetic in that, in the same man attending to the mind and the soul. Holy Cross is a college that doesn’t really make a distinction between the two, and for that it is truly notable. That sign in the atrium says it best; “Educating Hearts and Minds.”

Holy Cross is a holistic place, a place willing to address every part of the student; mind, body, soul, whatever… It’s a universal place, a catholic place, where the mission of the Holy Cross Brothers is made manifest. I’d be willing to bet that few of us arrived here two years ago envisioning this place as their “dream school.” For me, it was more like a life preserver thrown to a drowning boy. But in the words of the poet and philosopher Mr. Mick Jagger, “you can’t always get want you want, but if you try some time, you just might find, you get what you need.” Thank you.