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Commencement ’05: In Their Own Words
We talked to some of this year’s 3,122 graduates to get the stories behind the caps and gowns and beaming smiles.
July/August 2005
“This sash is from the Latin American house. I picked this one because I’m from Mexico and it has the Mexican colors. I grew up thinking that I was going to go to school in the same town that my parents were in. I remember standing on the Old Campus right outside of Lanman-Wright and not wanting my parents to leave. And here I am four years later, and walking past “L-Dub” today, I kept saying to them 'I used to live there, that’s the courtyard I used to hang out in, that was my room.' My parents actually had a fit when I told them I was going to be an art history major, because people in Mexico study what they’re going to be.”
Stefanie Carina Benitez Patino, Pueblo Mexico, Mexico
BA, History of Art
“I enjoyed myself today. It just seems so Yale to end the four years with all this pomp and circumstance, all the parading around. I’m a member of Jook Songs, an Asian American writing and performance group. I also founded an Asian American film group called Fade to Yellow. I’m heading off to LA, to the American Film Institute. I’m going to get an MFA in directing. I made a vampire movie when I was a sophomore, and a kung fu movie last year.”
Nathan Kitada, San Francisco, California
BA, Theater Studies and Ethnicity, Race, and Migration
“Today is really bittersweet. I don’t want to leave. I’m going to be here this summer, until the very last minute! I’ll be continuing my research on psychoacoustics and attention.”
Thomas Lee, New York, New York
BA, Psychology
“We were in the weird clubs. Tom was the Freestyle Dueling Association leader—the foam sword people. I was the 'President of Vice' for Nexus, the club for video games, games of every kind. I think I’m going to miss Yale, but it’s time to move on. We’ll be back.”
Tim Condon, Bend, Oregon
BS, Computer Science
“Commencements are all alike, and they’re all different. This was kind of an exceptionally spirited class. You can see they really enjoyed one another’s company over the years. I think they felt a special attachment to the college. I love to give my speech. I like to see the students with their parents. A lot of times, I haven’t seen the parents since freshman year. You see the students in a different way when you see them with their parents.”
Steven Smith, New Haven, Connecticut
Alfred Cowles Professor of Political Science; Master of Branford College
“I’ve learned a lot about how to help people, how to care for them and make them get better. I love my friends. Some of my friends and I are going to be working for the same company in a nursing home in Hartford County. I’m very happy about that.”
John Kinabrew, New Orleans, Louisiana
Master of Nursing
“Returning to Yale is bittersweet—it feels weird not having a parking place and not having a key to the places I used to go. Yale was fantastic: the best five and a half years of my life. When I started in the environmental engineering program in 1999, I was the first and only woman in the program. It had only started the year before. The program is now equally men and women.”
Sharon Walker, Los Angeles, California
PhD, Environmental Engineering, now an assistant professor at the University of California at Riverside
“The Law School’s all over the place; you can basically do anything you want to do. I wanted to get a broad spectrum, so I took some courses on race and civil rights and some corporate courses. I am very versatile. That’s why people come to Yale Law School, and that’s why I came.”
Laquesha Sanders, Atlanta, Georgia
JD, Law School
Recipients of Teaching Prizes
David Austin, Associate Professor of Chemistry: the Dylan Hixon Prize for Teaching Excellence in the Natural Sciences.
Christine Hayes, Professor of Religious Studies: the Sidonie Miskimin Clauss Prize for Teaching Excellence in the Humanities.
Michael Mahoney ’00PhD, Assistant Professor of History: the Sarai Ribicoff Award for the Encouragement of Teaching in Yale College.
Deborah Margolin, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Theater Studies: the Richard H. Brodhead Prize for Teaching Excellence by a Lecturer or Lector.
Brian Scholl, Assistant Professor of Psychology: the Lex Hixon Prize for Teaching Excellence in the Social Sciences.
Ramamurti Shankar, John Randolph Huffman Professor of Physics: the Harwood F. Byrnes/Richard B. Sewall Teaching Prize.
Recipients of Honorary Degrees
Jacqueline K. Barton, the Arthur and Marian Hanisch Memorial Professor of Chemistry at the California Institute of Technology, whose DNA research has “opened new understandings of how cells retain their stability, what causes them to be damaged, and how they might be repaired”: Doctor of Science.
Robert P. DeVecchi '52, president emeritus of the International Rescue Committee, who has been “devoted to the humanitarian needs of refugees and displaced persons around the world”: Doctor of Humane Letters.
William H. Foege, Emeritus Presidential Distinguished Professor of International Health at Emory University, a leading force in the worldwide campaign to eradicate smallpox and improve global health: Doctor of Medical Sciences.
David Hockney, “a master painter and draftsman widely recognized as well for his work as a printmaker, photographer, and stage designer”: Doctor of Fine Arts.
Mamphela A. Ramphele, South African activist, educator, physician, and community developer “widely recognized for her pioneering efforts on behalf of black South Africans during and after apartheid”: Doctor of Humane Letters.
Paul A. Samuelson, Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Nobel laureate economist, whose research has brought “clarity and logic to complex matters of choice”: Doctor of Social Sciences.
Bryan A. Stevenson, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative of Alabama and professor at the New York University School of Law, whose career has been “devoted to providing legal representation to those on the margins of society”: Doctor of Laws.
Andrew J. Wiles, Eugene Higgins Professor of Mathematics at Princeton University, who, “with a combination of intelligence, imagination, and incredible persistence,” solved one of math’s great challenges by proving Fermat’s last theorem: Doctor of Science.
Recipients of the Wilbur Lucius Cross Medal
Awarded by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences to alumni and distinguished friends
Lincoln Brower '57PhD, research professor in biology at Sweet Briar College, for his “dramatic research on butterfly ecology and evolution” and his “courage and leadership in applying biological insights to conservation issues.”
Peter Dervan '72PhD, Bren Professor of Chemistry at the California Institute of Technology, whose work combines the art of synthesis, physical chemistry, and biology, “an approach with profound implications for human medicine.”
Jennifer Hochschild '79PhD, Henry LeBarre Jayne Professor of Government at Harvard University, academic innovator and “promoter of better racial relations in American society.”
Richard Rorty '56PhD, professor of comparative literature at Stanford University, “committed democrat, humanist, teacher, and very much an American philosopher in the tradition of Dewey.”
Eric Wieschaus '74PhD, Squibb Professor of Molecular Biology at Princeton University and 1995 Nobel laureate in physiology of medicine, whose research has revealed “the genetic basis of animal development.”
Commencement Evensong Sermon (excerpt)
by Joseph Britton
Dean, Berkeley Divinity School at Yale
Jesus wept. (John 11:35)
I should like this evening to pose a provocative question to this year’s graduating class: “For what are you willing to weep?”
This item from a recent New York Times: “Deep in the swamp, a woodpecker thought extinct lives.” It seems that two ornithologists, comparing notes from a trip through the bayou of Brinkley, Arkansas, suddenly realized that they had both spotted an ivory-billed woodpecker, which was last sighted in 1944, and is known because of its magnificent size and coloring as the “Lord God bird.” The Times reported that when they wrote down their notes independently and compared them, “Mr. Gallagher and Mr. Harrison were so struck by the reality of the discovery that Mr. Harrison began sobbing, repeating, ‘I saw an ivory-bill.’”
And so we come to our question: for what will you weep? Is there a place deep inside you where you have caught a glimpse of the sheer wonder and goodness and graciousness of God, so that when something puts you in touch with that place, it causes you to weep out of joy and wonder?
School of Forestry & Environmental Studies Commencement Remarks (excerpt)
by Rebecca Reider ’05MESc
Two contrasting, intense sets of emotions mark the path of this environmental profession we have chosen, which for many of us here is less a profession than a way of life, even a religion. On the one hand, we have our idealism, purpose, determination, passion for what is just, beautiful, wild, and right; while on the other hand, we feel the disillusioning weight of the world’s problems, made heavier by the inertia of human ignorance and selfishness which make it hard to get anything done.
Those coexisting sets of emotions have been a strange theme of this year here. Two weeks ago a much-loved classmate of ours, Laurie Cuoco, suddenly died. For those who knew her and even many who didn’t, that was a kick right in the heart. So once again, sitting here, we find ourselves celebrating and mourning all at once.
And I suspect it’s not going to get easier. People sitting here today are going to challenge the status quo in this world; that’s why we’ll meet resistance. It’s been so sweet to spend two years here, learning from leaders who came before us; and having a space to hammer out our own visions for the world’s future. But now the green cocoon opens; we flutter back out into a world where it’s not so easy being green. Here we’ve had the luxury of debating among political ecologists, environmental economists, and conservation biologists to get ourselves on the same page—but much of the world’s not even speaking our language.
How to deal with that? We have to discover how to work with those hard moments, death and defeat. It’s not easy—but those times give us unique opportunities; then is when we realize what’s really important to us, and when we learn to find strength in other people.
Yale Law School Commencement Remarks (excerpt)
by Harold Hongju Koh, Dean
You, the members of the Class of 2005, have special reason to be proud because for you, no one made law school easy. On your first day of law school, the university went on strike, and so you found that labor law was not an advanced course that could be put off until second semester. And from that moment on: the law has refused to leave you alone.
By November, you were arguing about issues of discrimination and diversity. By spring, you were studying the international law justifications for going to war in Iraq. And as your first year came to an end, you learned what it was like to be at ground zero during a bombing. [On May 21, 2003, a small bomb went off in the Law School, doing minor damage to two rooms. Law students were housed in Ezra Stiles during the ensuing investigation. The perpetrator has not been found.—Eds. ] A few days later, at Ezra Stiles College, you learned what it is like to be refugees, as well as witnesses in a federal criminal investigation. And before your first exam period ended, you learned all about the joys of amnesty. And that was all just in your first year.
By second year, as Brown vs. the Board turned 50, the Defense Department began enforcing the Solomon Amendment and along with the faculty, many of you learned what it was like to be plaintiffs engaged in constitutional impact litigation. We learned with horror about Abu Ghraib, even while Guantánamo was finally brought under the rule of law. Then in your third year, you survived an election, a tsunami, the first Red Sox championship in 86 years, a new pope, and even a new dean.
Commencement remarks (excerpt) at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
by Sidney Altman, Sterling Professor, Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology
The role of graduate school is to make students independent scholars. The idea of an independent scholar is to recognize your deficiencies, and those of others, and to pursue problems knowing what you don’t know, what you do know, and what you will know when the next phase of research is done. Of course, the byways of scholarship can be mystifying and totally unexpected.
This year’s Wilbur Cross medalists exhibit in their work the critical ingredients in scholarship—imagination and creativity. But their high achievements came from years of toil and thought. A PhD thesis is a first step, but only a first step, on the road to greater accomplishments. In the world of physics, this is an especially important year: the 100th anniversary of the publications of Einstein’s first three papers, all of which were thunderclaps in physics in 1905. Einstein seemed magical in his thought, imagination, and creativity. He was a part-time graduate student at that time. Aside from the fact that he had a marvelous mind, how did he confront and solve his problems? The answer, perhaps, is a profound knowledge of his field, along with reflection—and reflection—and reflection!
Fellow scholars, the world awaits your entry as independent professionals. What does it have to offer? The silence of the stacks in the luxury of an excellent library; the pleasure of the minds of your colleagues; the joy of friends; the appreciation of students and, most improbably, the responses of citizens of the world who will pay close attention to, and recognize, a fine mind working.  |
