Commencement Address -- May 30, 1998

When Cheley Milner and Ben Barnhill visited me on behalf of the senior class to invite me to be your speaker, I was speechless—for the first time in my life. After all, I make my living by the sweat of my jaw. But once I recovered my composure, I told them how flattered I was by the invitation.

Of course, I realized that some of you would have preferred to have had a real celebrity such as Leonardo DeCaprio give this speech. You parents may not know that the handsome young actor of titanic popularity surreptitiously enrolled at Furman during the winter term, but he soon found the academic demands too rigorous and the beauty of the Furman women too distracting, so he returned to full-time acting. By the way, Leo, as I call him, sends his regrets.

Even if Leo had been able to speak this evening, there are certain risks involved in paying high fees to big-name celebrities to give commencement speeches.

Those on the professional commencement circuit are often so busy flitting from one campus to another that they get disoriented—as was the case last week when a popular celebrity opened her remarks to graduates by saying how delighted she was to be at Wellesley College. The only problem was that she was at William & Mary.

What makes being your speaker so fulfilling is that I have such a special relationship with this senior class. My first year as president was your freshman year, so you are the first graduating class I have worked with for all four years.

There is also a wonderful symmetry evident here tonight, for it was exactly 25 years ago that I was a graduating senior at Furman. I will never forget the event—in the air we could feel the sense of accomplishment, excitement, and, the most chilling feeling of all—the absolute fear that the commencement speech would never end.

Take heart: I promise not to go beyond my allotted 90 minutes.

Actually, I intend my remarks to be refreshingly brief, a characteristic rarely attributed to my speeches, as the faculty can attest.

In fact, I have always admired two particular commencement addresses because of their remarkable brevity. The first was a graduation address that Winston Churchill delivered at Oxford University.

As he approached the podium with his trademark cigar, cane, and top hat, he shouted, ``Never give up!'' Several seconds passed before he rose to his toes and repeated, "Never, never give up.'' Then he sat down.

The other speech made remarkable by its briefness occurred at Davidson College in 1960. It was delivered by Dabney Stuart, now a professor of poetry and fiction at Washington & Lee. In its entirety it read:

Much has been written and said,

Those who wrote and spoke are either dying or dead.

Jesus said: "Love one another."

I have nothing significant to add.

The challenge of being the speaker at graduations, I have discovered, is to defy the low expectations of the audience. After all, being a commencement speaker is like being a corpse at a funeral. You are needed in order to hold the event, but no one expects you to say very much.

I would be the first to admit that most commencement addresses are painfully predictable. They are filled with avuncular advice seasoned with noble clichés and pompous platitudes.

The advice-giving tradition of commencement addresses seems paradoxical. After all, here we are about to confer degrees on bright young people because they have been diligent learners for four years, yet we feel the need to tell them in 20 minutes what they really must know before they leave.

Doesn’t that seem a bit strange? It certainly does to me. So in an effort to be at least somewhat original, I decided not to give you any advice tonight.

Instead I want you to relax, sit back, and think about two questions:

What do we take with us? What do we leave behind?

While you’re thinking about those questions, let me pay tribute to the Class of 1998 by sharing what I have learned from you during the four years I have been privileged to share your company.

In making this decision not to give you any advice tonight, I was mindful of what an 8th grade student wrote on a world history test: "Socrates," she said, "was a Greek teacher who told people what to do, so they poisoned him."

Perhaps the first lesson I learned from you was to be reminded of the saving virtue of a sense of humor. Only a few days after this class arrived at Furman in September 1994, Susan and I hosted a freshman Dialogue group at our home.

As we ate and chatted, one of the young men asked about visitation privileges in the women’s dorms, and I explained the schedule to him.

He then wanted to know what the penalty would be for lingering after hours on the girls’ halls. I said that there was a $50 fine for the first offense, a $100 fine for a second offense, and $200 for the third offense, whereupon he asked, "How much for a season’s pass." That young man has since decided to go into the ministry.

Humor, I learned from you, is the most universal of languages and a wonderful tool to deflate pomposity, especially in academe.

Education is a serious business, and we treat it as such at Furman, but we should not take ourselves too seriously.

Consider this example: During your sophomore year, a group of your classmates invited me to go see the movie Dumb and Dumber. When I asked what it was about, they said it focused on two college administrators.

During your orientation week as freshmen, I proposed that you and I vow to have a good time over the next four years, and we have done so.

In the process, you have demonstrated that, even amid all the high purposes that we pursue each day, we can benefit from the saving grace of the divine joy of humor.

Another great lesson you have taught me is the virtue of resilience.

Human beings are notoriously ambivalent about change. There is something in us that fiercely resists change while there is also something in us that welcomes it and even seeks it out.

Wisdom, it seems to me, often derives from our accepting that things do not always turn out as planned or anticipated and that we must adapt to the unexpected, the unwanted, and the unexplainable.

Wisdom, in other words, endows us with a sense of confidence in the absence of stability. It reminds us that life is a turbulent voyage rather than a protected harbor, a dynamic process rather than a static condition.

This senior class has experienced more instability at Furman than any other class since this new campus opened in 1958.

You have had to adjust to an inexperienced new president and many other new administrators, countless construction projects, and, God forbid, the temporary draining of the Furman lake!

This class saw the new Mickel Tennis Center, Stone Soccer Stadium and Timmons Arena constructed and opened—as well as Riley Hall and the Daniel Memorial Chapel, a place where many of you will be married in coming years.

This year you helped us christen two new academic buildings: Johns Hall and the Herring Music Pavilion, and you have tolerated with remarkable patience and good will the construction-related hassles of the expanded student center and the new apartment complex.

You have also displayed great resilience in your willingness to listen to us rhapsodize about the benefits of engaged learning, and you have been willing to let us cajole, prod, and even coerce you to become more active participants in the learning process.

By encouraging, tolerating, and taking advantage of these and many other changes, you have demonstrated the virtues of resilience and have manifested your desire for Furman to settle for nothing less than excellence. You have accepted the reality and the necessity of change, the need for endless learning and striving.

To be sure, not all of the changes you have witnessed here were unanimously endorsed. In raising questions and expressing concerns about developments on campus, you have displayed the best attributes of a liberal arts education: that is, you have shown an ability to think for yourselves, not simply to follow and obey blindly, nor just to drift through your days, but to think and act responsibly and independently.

You have shown that constructive criticism can indeed be a good thing. After all, that is why God invented the editors of the Paladin.

In addition to being resilient students and independent thinkers, you have also exemplified for me the power of prayerful hope. Thirteen months ago your classmate Pat Hickman contracted acute respiratory distress syndrome, a lung disease that proves fatal in half the cases.

Pat spent the first six weeks of his prolonged hospital stay sedated in a coma-like condition, hooked to a ventilator and a feeding tube. For many uncertain weeks, you held prayer vigils in the chapel, visited Pat at the hospital, and assisted his parents during their daily vigil.

Despite the incredible strain and uncertainty of the situation, your unflagging hope and selfless care inspired everyone, and we all have celebrated Pat’s return to school this year.

Those of us who witnessed such a sustained outpouring of support for a suffering classmate were ourselves rehabilitated by your witness.

Your actions made tangible the redemptive reality of hope. That simple four letter word is one of those slippery abstract nouns cheapened by too frequent use.

Through your actions you taught me that hope is not the same as optimism and that what really counts in life is how we cope with setbacks, not with our successes.

For some, hope is simply the faith that something will turn out well.

For others, it is the tough-minded certainty that something, however perplexing or mysterious, makes sense, regardless of when or how it turns out.

"We are saved by hope," St. Paul said to the Romans. He knew that there is no medicine as potent as hope and that even setbacks can be beneficial. As Paul explained, "We glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation begets patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope."

You have helped me see with enforced patience that the world and history are governed by a time of their own, as are our lives, in which we can creatively intervene but never achieve complete control.

The concern you displayed for Pat Hickman and for each other over these four years has also reminded me that it is love that tempers our convictions and deepens our humanity.

You have demonstrated how love can prevent judgment from being judgmental. You have alerted me that without love, and its cousin humility, conviction can careen into dogmatism and knowledge can become arrogant and self-serving.

You have revealed that love helps transform knowledge into wisdom.

And you have given witness to the fact that love binds together this community of learners, a place where people know and care about others and are known and cared for by them.

So hang on to one another tightly this evening. Hang on to your families and your classmates and your professors. For you will soon discover that the world outside this campus has a surplus of cynicism, selfishness, and loneliness.

You are going to meet disappointment, injustice, and betrayal.

You will find you are weak when you thought yourself strong.

You will discover that prejudice and bigotry still thrive amid our supposedly enlightened age.

You will work hard to accumulate more possessions only to discover that they possess you.

As you encounter these unsettling realities, summon up the spiritual fellowship, mental toughness, and creative resilience that Furman has sought to instill and nurture in you.

For as the old gospel song assures us, "God did not bring you this far, just to leave you."

So take a deep breath and lean back one last time into the everlasting arms of this sacred place. Then, when you are ready, take your next step, and know that you do not take it alone.

In conclusion, I want to offer my answer to the questions I posed to you earlier. What do you leave behind? You leave a legacy of laughter, resilience, hope, and love.

What do you take with you? Along with your books, CDs, clothes, and student loans, I hope you have packed the animating spirit of this special place. The Furman spirit will help you to keep caring—caring more than others might think is wise. It will help you to dream more than others think is practical, and to expect more than others think possible.

In the months and years ahead, Susan and I hope you will come to share our abiding love for alma mater and identify with its destiny. Whether you know it or not, Furman is going to be a part of you forever.

This college will serve as elder, as friend, as landmark and touchstone, as point of origin and return, as haven and sanctuary.

And yes, at times Furman will even keep you from being lonely by providing a steady stream of mail and phone calls from your class agents.

In a few hours you will set out on a path that will only rarely lead back this way again. Yet wherever you go from here, a part of you will remain rooted in this patch of green and shaded earth, like a buried treasure guarded by proud old trees, ready to be redeemed by warm memories or by a return visit.

So as you leave tonight, please appreciate how much you have given to this place and how much we have learned from your vital example.

It has been an honor to be your president.