Student Commencement Address by Ainsley Dunbar Buss ’25

These are the student remarks delivered by Ainsley Dunbar Buss ’25 at the 2025 Furman University Commencement ceremony.

The Pale Blue Dot

In February of 1990, Voyager 1 took a family portrait of our solar system. The most famous photo from this collection is entitled “The Pale Blue Dot,” and it’s a photo of Earth, taken from 3,762 million miles away. In the photo, Earth is smaller than a pixel, surrounded by three light rays from the sun. When the Voyager first launched, NASA did not intend for “The Pale Blue Dot” to be taken, since it doesn’t provide much scientific value, as Earth appears too small for Voyager 1’s cameras to make out any detail.

But that is precisely why this picture is so important. Yes, it offers no detail on new moons, or on our atmosphere, or anything that can be quantified as data. What it does offer is a perspective on humanity’s place in the universe. It is a photo of us, collective, human, and home.

Ainsley Buss with the Furman Percussion Ensemble PASIC Tour in Franklin, Tennessee, in 2022.

As a class, none of us were alive when this photo was taken, and maybe some of our parents didn’t know each other yet, and our professors didn’t work at Furman, but in that moment, every one single person who was alive, every structure, and every memory flickering in their minds is on that pale blue dot. When I saw that photo for the first time, I couldn’t help but self-reflect. To view that photo is to see the past and future of us as a class and community, of our professors, of Furman’s campus, of our aspirations and dreams, and of what we can achieve as a collective – together.

The last few years have been challenging for us as a class. We’ve dealt with the lingering effects of COVID-19 since we were in high school, but we are also the last class to see the virus’s presence on Furman’s campus. We’ve met people; we’ve learned to love people, and we’ve lost people too. As Carl Sagan said about “The Pale Blue Dot,” “There is no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”

Sagan said something right here, talking about how we must cherish what we have, the memories that we hold of the Earth, but specifically, I think of these last four years that we’ve spent together, because they have been hard, but we have trudged through them, snow and hurricane and deadlines and studying in the library, and we’ve done it together. To preserve what we have done together is to remember these hardships we’ve faced, yes, but it’s also to celebrate our successes, and know that we have changed ourselves – and each other – only for the better.

When I think of Earth, I think of home. I think of Furman. I think of how we have loved together. I think of the struggles of wondering if I, if we, are good enough. Of hoping for a phone call from a loved one because we miss home. I think of the joy of watching my best friend perform in an opera. I think of the ROTC members being commissioned as second lieutenants into the Army.

When I think of home, I think of the Furman football players who spend their weekend visiting sick children in hospitals, simply to be kind. I think of the professor who brought his RV on campus during Helene so that we could charge our cell phones so we could continue calling home. I think of our orientation, how four years ago, we were nothing but simple freshmen, waiting to step into our real lives. Of course, I think too of Stasi and Bryce, who were with us at orientation but not now, and I know that where they are, it is home for them the same way Furman is, and always will be, for all of us.

“Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark,” Carl Sagan said, and maybe he’s right. We may be only beings of a pale blue dot, a pixel in a photo, a single point in the cosmos, but we are not alone. We may be the only beings in the universe, but we are that together, creating new memories, learning new things, advancing our home, celebrating our successes, and loving each other always. While Voyager 1 will never take another photo of Earth or look back upon home, I like to think that it smiles upon us still, knowing that it has shown us the greatest gift home has ever given us – ourselves, together always.

Buss graduated with a bachelor of arts degree in music and English with a concentration in creative writing. Her creative nonfiction was featured twice in The Echo, Furman’s literary magazine. She served as percussion section leader for The Paladin Regiment from 2022 to 2025, treasurer of the Percussion Club from 2023 to 2025 and is a member of both the Furman Symphonic Band and the award-winning Furman Percussion Ensemble. She was the lead music director of the Pauper Players’ production of “Ride the Cyclone” in 2023 and has taught percussion at Woodmont High School since 2022. She serves as an advisory member of the Humanities Center Student Board and was named in the Dean’s List every semester since 2021. This fall, she will begin pursuing an MFA in creative writing on the nofiction track at Emerson College in Boston.

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