Faculty and student commencement addresses
On May 30, 2009, Phil Lucas, professor of history, and David Kugler of Gering, Neb., who graduated with a double major in psychology and sociology, delivered the commencement addresses for the Class of 2009. They are reproduced here in their entirety.
David Kugler ’09
Five years ago, I started the college search process never having heard of Cornell College until I received a letter in the mail. Being intrigued by the One Course At A Time Calendar and wanting to learn more about this mysterious school, I decided to send back the information card. The summer before my senior year in high school, my family decided to go on a road trip to tour colleges. My dad thought that since we were visiting schools in eastern Nebraska we could travel to that “little school in Iowa” and just look at it. After this road trip, I had made up my mind about where I was going to attend college…and it was not Cornell because the residence halls did not have air conditioning. My mom was mortified that I was going to make my college decision based on air conditioning in the dorms, but after receiving multiple phone calls from persistent Cornell students, Cornell was looking more like a place I wanted to attend. (I later learned by working as a telecounselor that Cornell calls all prospective students even students who are not at all interested, but at the time I felt like Cornell was reaching out to me personally.) Once I got back to the dry heat of western Nebraska and out of the Iowa humidity, I came to my senses and realized that Cornell was everything I had ever wanted in a school: It was out of Nebraska, I knew no one, and it had a high quality academic reputation.
Fast forward one year later, I had arrived on campus and went to the New Student Orientation Convocation where Student Body President Steve Wieland said, “Enjoy the next four years because they will go incredibly fast.” At the time I just laughed to myself thinking “Yeah right,” but Steve was absolutely correct. I cannot believe that our four years at Cornell have ended so quickly. Love it or hate it, Cornell has become our home for four years, and we have all been greatly shaped by our Cornell experiences (or as I like to call them “Extraordinary Opportunities”…Okay so maybe I’m not the only person who calls them that).
Cornell is kind of like the television show Cheers because it seems that everyone knows your name (or at least a tidbit of gossip about you), and I would not have it any other way. I have made lasting friendships and had incredible faculty. The interactions that I have had with staff have also been wonderful. It may sound silly, but every where I look at Cornell I see extraordinary people engaged in “extraordinary opportunities.” I cannot believe how much I have learned about myself, other people, and the world by attending a small liberal arts college in a small Iowa town. I would like to share some of the lessons that I have learned by being at Cornell with all of you.
Lessons I Have Learned By Attending Cornell:
- Be yourself even if it is scary at first…That way you can live life without regrets.
- You cannot love others until you learn to love yourself.
- I tried to fight my sociology professors on this one because as much as I want to believe that I have agency and free will, I have learned that I am constrained by our larger societal structure. If I want to have agency within this structure, I need to organize it in a way where I can exercise my free will.
- Be open to new experiences (I had no idea that applying to be an RA three years ago would lead to a future career in student affairs—Sorry if I ever wrote you up.)
- It’s okay to give something up when it stops being enjoyable and move onto something new. This way, you can discover new passions and have new experiences. Sometimes these experiences will be positive and other times they will be negative, but try to learn something from every single one of these occasions.
- Good friends come and go, but they will always have a special place in your heart.
- Judging others only causes others to judge you. We also tend to judge others when we are insecure about something within ourselves. Accept others’ imperfections, differences of opinions, and flaws. We all have flaws. Embrace them. I have probably learned more about my own beliefs from the people with whom I disagree, but disagree respectfully.
- Be willing to change your first impressions. They are not always right.
- Honesty truly is the best policy. Sometimes the truth hurts, but we eventually pull ourselves together and get over it. People can take bad news, but deliver the bad news gently.
- Sodexo cooks better than I do.
- Be proud of your accomplishments (We all have many), but try to remain grounded and in touch with reality. Modesty and humility are qualities that I genuinely admire in people.
- I’ve discovered new passions and things that I enjoy such as discussing sociological issues, painting, making art, veggie corn dogs, and eating sushi while keeping some of the things that I have always enjoyed like laughing with friends until my stomach hurts, increasing my cultural capital by visiting museums and watching theatre performances, quoting Nicole Richie, applying Chapstick, and washing my hands with foam soap.
- Meeting new people can be scary but also incredibly rewarding. Putting yourself in potentially uncomfortable situations and making yourself somewhat vulnerable can truly allow you to connect with a variety of people. I have made wonderful connections by attending Cornell, a school where I knew no one coming in.
- Everything happens for a reason even if you do not immediately know the reason.
- I believe that everyone has a personal ongoing struggle that helps them discover their true identity. Do not avoid this struggle…It is what makes you unique.
- Tell people frequently how much you care about them.
- Sometimes letting go is really a good thing. Remember all of your memories from Cornell, but accept and embrace new challenges that will face you very soon.
Cornell is who I am. I have learned to grow from my experiences here whether they have been positive or negative, and whether or not you believe it, Cornell is who you are too. Each of my classmates has somehow shaped my four years here, and I am forever grateful. I am incredibly impressed by the internships, fellowships, service to the community, and campus programs that have been done by all of you. I have no doubts that wherever we go, we will each be successful. I am proud to say that I graduated from Cornell College, and I am even prouder to be a member of the Class of 2009. Congratulations!
Phil Lucas
President Garner, Dean Carlson, Distinguished Guests, Faculty, Parents and Family Members and, most importantly, the Class of 2009:
Thank you. It is a great honor to be able to speak to you today. On behalf of my colleagues I congratulate you on your many achievements that led to this special day. You succeeded in the classroom, in the studio, in the labs, in the musical ensembles. You further enriched the college by your excellence in athletics, presentations at the student symposia, in your participation in student organizations, in memorable stage productions, and in your countless conversations with your professors across the campus. You made communities better through your volunteer work. Never underestimate your talent and your accomplishments. But I want to argue in a few minutes that there is something more you need to appreciate.
So let me talk about Abraham Lincoln. 2009 is the 200th anniversary of his birth. The traditional story of the education of Abraham Lincoln is well known. By the firelight young Abraham read and re-read his primers and practiced his letters with charcoal on wood planks and the fireplace shovel. Later in life Lincoln would walk for miles to borrow books from obliging neighbors.
While this is all true, or true enough, the rest of the story of Lincoln’s education is more interesting. When interviewed later, neighbors from Lincoln’s Indiana home – where he spent most of his life before age 20 – recalled his story telling and rambunctious nature, but also often called him lazy. Lazy?? Not the term that we associate with the rail-splitter and ambitious Lincoln. When probed further these folks remembered Abraham constantly reading. Reading when he should have been farming and helping his father. Rather than walk to borrow a book, he should have been walking behind a plow.
People in New Salem, Illinois, where Lincoln settled after leaving his father’s farm, also recall the storyteller, but also Lincoln the reader. So what was he reading? The Bible and newspapers for certain. History, of course. He did not like novels, but loved poetry, and Robert Burns especially. Shakespeare too. Thomas Paine’s Age of Reason was a favorite. And Lincoln did not simply read these works, he studied them, he committed them to memory. He read them aloud to himself to understand the meter and the grammatical structure better. Realizing his deficiencies in grammar he borrowed a grammar text and mastered it, memorized it. When Lincoln was pressured by debtors a friend got him the job of deputy surveyor. He acquired the basic texts and became proficient in surveying techniques. Lincoln was widely know as an honest and accurate surveyor. But that was not satisfying enough. Knowing the geometry and trigonometry required for surveying was not good enough, so he worked his way through the first six books of Euclid and a treatise on logarithms. To his final years he bragged about that accomplishment.
So what?
Think about it – grammar, poetry, Shakespeare, the Bible, Thomas Paine, history, and geometry. This is a liberal arts education. Not as good as yours, but Lincoln’s instinct was that to achieve his goals, a liberal arts education, almost entirely self taught, was to be pursued relentlessly.
To take this a step further: The point of this reading was not simply the memorization of facts. For example, not well known about the early Lincoln was his religious skepticism. This got toned down later when he ran for public office. But Lincoln’s skepticism was not the snarky repetition of others, rather it was the result of careful study and critical analysis. He read the Bible repeatedly and thoroughly. Anyone who encounters his Second Inaugural Address immediately sees his facility with its stories and lessons. He also studied the critics and formed his own opinion. In a similar fashion his memorization of poetry and Shakespeare was not to amuse others. Anyone who reads Lincoln’s debates with Douglas, his Cooper Union Speech, his Second Inaugural or the Gettysburg Address soon realizes that his genius was to take the poetry and the study of grammar to create something new, remarkable, and compelling.
This leads to my final point about Lincoln. What was the purpose of this education and skills that we associate with a liberal arts education? Lincoln’s second instinct was not the mere acquisition of wealth. Not that there is anything wrong with earning money. But we have recently been reminded not to admire those who have great wealth without asking how they acquired it.
Lincoln’s second instinct was that there was something more. That education, so difficult to obtain, could be used to serve society, to improve society.
When the profession of law seemed attainable, Lincoln, in his typical fashion, taught himself the law. He mastered the forms of law, the precedents, but he also sought to divine the larger principles. What rights are guaranteed to the people? Which people? How are they to be advanced, how are they to be protected? If the Constitution is flawed, one must look to the past to find the higher law. The answer was enunciated “four score and seven years ago” in the Declaration of Independence. Lincoln applied a lifetime of learning to confirm his instinct that more is possible for American society and to persuade his countrymen that it was time for “a new birth of freedom.”
But what I really want to talk about today is not Lincoln even if he was born two centuries ago. I want to talk about some other people from Lincoln’s time, people who Lincoln thought about, but barely knew. I refer to the freedmen and women who left a cruel bondage thanks to the labors of Lincoln and the deaths of many thousands. When the freed women and men left their shackles behind they encountered well meaning Northern missionaries who offered what was denied so long – an education. And they seized that opportunity with a passion.
As one of their leaders said, “We should be a degenerate people did we not remove the barriers between the rich and the poor, the strong and the dependent, the learned and the unlearned, and break the control of the few over the many, extend the largest liberty to the greatest number, and strengthen in every way the democratic principles of our Constitution.” That is what an education would do.
The freed people did not want the missionaries to provide trade schools. No, they wanted to be able to read, write, and do arithmetic. The elderly and the young, parents and their children, women and men, wanted to read. Some children walked four miles to get to schools, but they came every day. Their parents made the same journey to attend night school. They wanted to acquire the basics, and then get to the more difficult material. Their instinct was to be liberally educated. They wanted to read the newspapers, the Bible, the books in the old masters’ libraries, to learn French, to be able to dream and create without persecution and to write their ideas down. They knew with that kind of education one’s freedom may encounter threats, but it cannot be taken away.
Perhaps it is appropriate, and not surprising, that one of the spirituals grateful children and parents liked to sing to their teachers had the following words:
Jesus make the blind to see
Jesus make the deaf to hear
Jesus make the cripple walk
Walk in, dear Jesus,
No man can hinder me.
No man can hinder me.
They wanted that education because their instincts told them there was more to life than money, and with the right education they and their families could lead more satisfying lives and they could advance society too.
What we can learn from Abraham Lincoln and the freed people is the confirmation of what we know. Your instincts brought you to Cornell College, and my colleagues and I applaud your success. The instincts that led you here, to this education, are undeniable and invaluable. But as Lincoln and the freedmen and women knew, that was but the first step. They followed their instincts to apply that knowledge to the unprecedented challenges that faced them, and to make difficult decisions to attain justice in its many dimensions. History shows such instincts serve well whether one is surrounded by a horrible war, emerging from 200 years of bondage, or in the midst of a crippled economy.
Embrace the new world beyond Cornell with confidence in your own instincts, and with the optimism that your contributions will make it better.
All I ask is that you occasionally reflect on what was, what is, and what will be.
Thank you.
