Roy J. Nirschel, Ph.D., President

Provost de Abruna, Board Chairman Ralph Papitto, Trustees, faculty, staff, parents and families, Good morning and congratulations to the class of 2007.  

This is my twenty-fifth graduation in higher education and my 6th at Roger Williams University.  And no class – I repeat – no class is better than this one.

Each year I feel a little like Time Magazine.  Now, for some of your generation I have to explain that Time is a magazine. If you haven’t actually seen one –magazines are pretty cool – they are like printed versions of online publications – you know, words/pictures. We have them in our library – and for a few of you that’s the big building in the middle of the campus with the clock tower.

Each year Time Magazine selects a person of the year.  In the olden days they called it the Man of the Year.   They try to find an individual who represents an extraordinary achievement for the previous year – good, bad, extraordinary.

Each year I wrestle with important events to recount, people to recognize, stories to tell – even, I am reminded a song to sing.   So, in some ways I am like Time Magazine searching for the theme of the year.

Time’s most recent persons of the year have been President Bush, the American Soldier, Bill and Melinda Gates and Bono.

From this very podium I recognized a few of our own people of the year – [Jason Pedicone, our first Fulbright scholar] [student legend Ethan Marron] [Shane Mathewson, who survived 5 years in Architecture and 5 years as my daughter’s boyfriend] and of course, [the billboard queen of Metacom – Linda Clark.]

How can you top perfection?

This year Time and I settled on the same person for recognition.  Instead of the famous, the powerful, or the celebrated ----Time’s Person of the Year was YOU.  That’s right YOU.  

You and You and You.  This does not mean just Ernest Offley and Al Borelli – who asked me to mention them in my speech – which I just did.  Or Ashley Gingarella – the 7th member of her family to graduate from RWU.  It means all of you.

You popularized you tube. You are the faces of facebook. You are myspace. You create knowledge, disseminate it – without anyone's expressed written consent.

You are the information generation.  You have disrupted the established order of things – have charted your own path, created your own realities.

The world is yours.  And to quote Paris Hilton, “that’s hot.”

And at Roger Williams University – in a different way – it has also been about you.

You asked for a first class recreation center – we built it.

You asked for better food in the dining hall – and you got it – better food and a new dining hall.

You asked for more chances to study abroad and you had them. 

And, while abroad you learned that speaking loudly in English in Florence doesn’t make your point more easily understood. 

You volunteered for more service hours than any students in university history.  You went to Indonesia after the tsunami, you decided to go New Orleans after Katrina.  No one told you to do good – you just did it.

You started more clubs and organizations than at any time in the history of the university.

You registered to vote in record numbers in your first presidential election and voted in the town of Bristol in state and local elections – and made a difference.

And while your predecessors might have brought Busta Rymes to campus - You brought Ludacris. Your decision – CEN did it.  And as an aside, when I was hanging with Luda and his posse – I said – Luda, you call that a posse? I got 1000 of them graduating on May 19th.

You made the Hawks Herald a source of pride.  You took leadership in the Student Senate and voiced your opinions – emphatically but with reason and respect – on those rare occasions when the administration was wrong.

And you took your management of WQRI seriously when you upheld the rules and standards of the station against political pressure and the poor advice of your elders. 

But enough about you.  Time didn’t give out its award just because of individual accomplishments but because individuals in relationship with others is what changes the world – It’s what  makes life worth living and it's what education is all about.   Philosopher Martin Buber didn’t call his treatise “I and I” but “I and thou.”  The Constitution doesn’t begin with “I the person” but with “We, the People” – And – of course it's not “me and myself” – it’s “me, myself and Irene.”

And that’s the way it is at Roger Williams.

It’s about you learning galactic marketing from Professor Ben Carr – for whom your fellow alumni have endowed a scholarship.

Ulker Copur making you think about sustainability as a value.

You and Tony Hollingsworth reading Latin and celebrating the classics in their original text

You learning to love the law because of Lisa Newcity.

You and Bill Grandgeorge – who steps down today after four decades of service as a professor of theater – discussing what's happening on the London Stage and getting you to love (or at least get) Shakespeare.

It’s about students and faculty – student affairs staff and you – your coaches and you – student advocates and you – the custodians and food service and public safety officers and you and those dozens upon dozens of connections that you will take with YOU today and are part of YOU forever.
 
It is a tradition that I usually conclude my remarks by mangling a lyric or two, but I won’t do it today because today is about YOU and I am not sure YOU want me to sing.

PAUSE

Yours has been a great class, so no matter what happens don’t change – you have been a first class class  and to quote the near legendary Fergie –

GLAMOR  OUS  GLAMOR OUS
We flying the first class
Up in the sky
Poppin' champagne
Living the life
In the fast lane
I won’t change
For the glamorous – oh the flossy flossy
GLAMOR  OUS
Yeah GLAMOROUS

You’ve been fabulous, glamorous, too wonderful for words.  Enjoy your day, enjoy your family and friends, be safe, be well, stop to smell the flowers on the way out – please don’t pick them and, in the words of the late Warren Zevon – enjoy every sandwich.