UB grads urged to look beyond personal goals
University at Buffalo President John Simpson warned against an “eroding” national commitment to public higher education at Sunday’s commencement ceremony in Alumni Arena.
With 1,200 graduates, the university’s 163rd graduation ceremony was also the largest of 14 that began May 1 and will continue through May 23, during which time an additional 4,100 graduates will be granted diplomas.
Simpson said he feared public higher education was bearing the brunt of tough economic times without sufficient public dialogue, both in New York State and elsewhere.
“I have concern that our nation’s commitment to public higher education is eroding just when it needs to be strengthened,” Simpson said.
“States simply can’t resist looking at higher education for the immediate source of budget savings for today’s crisis, regardless of the long-term consequences of this penny-wise, pound-foolish philosophy. It is the metaphorical ‘killing the goose that lays the golden egg,’ 21st-century style,” Simpson said.
Simpson also criticized thinking that narrowly casts the primary purpose of public higher education as “the preparation of individuals for personal success, rather than the cultivation of an educated and socially responsible citizenry.”
UB bestowed honorary doctorates to Herbert A. Hauptman, 92, president of Hauptman- Woodward Medical Research Institute and a Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, and Alan Zweibel, a UB graduate who went on to become an award-winning comedy writer and producer.
“Now I find myself up here getting a doctorate, sharing the stage and this honor with someone who’s real smart, a Nobel Prize winner, and me,” Zweibel said. “Totally different sides of the brain, and it’s a credit to this university that they are bestowing such an honor to two such diverse people at the same time.”
The 1958 football team that received national attention this past year for refusing a half-century ago to play in the Tangerine Bowl, in Orlando, Fla., rather than bow to segregation was honored with the school’s prestigious Chancellor Charles P. Norton Medal.
Willie Evans, one of two African- Americans on the team, accepted the award along with teammate Charles Tirone, who called the award “the crowning achievement of our university, [a] life-fulling experience.”
Their teammates, seated opposite the stage, stood and received loud applause from those in attendance.
Student speaker Geoffrey Millard urged his fellow graduates to take hold of the buzzword “hope” heard so much since President Obama began using it on his path to the White House.
“If we have come here and earned a degree rather than just a receipt, we can be that hope,” said Millard, who spent two tours of active duty in the military while attending UB, including a 13-month stint in Iraq, before becoming an outspoken opponent of the war.
“When you get up in the morning [tomorrow], put on your work shoes. Because if we are the hope that this country needs, then we have to dance hard tonight, and work even harder tomorrow,” Millard said.
“We will need to work, because hope can easily turn into a dream unfulfilled if we do not go out and work to make it all come true,” Millard said.
Earlier, Rabbi Avrohom Gurary also urged the graduates to reach for their higher selves.
“Let the turbulence of the times further inform our graduates that material and self-seeking goals alone do not pave the path to abiding accomplishment and fulfillment . . . Compassion and benevolence, ethics and values are the sustaining foundations and pillars,” he said.
Sen. Charles E. Schumer, as has been the case frequently in recent years, was a last-minute addition to the speaker’s rostrum. He recycled his story of how he found work he enjoys doing after turning his back on a potentially lucrative attorney’s career.
“My advice to you is simple: “Try to find a job, a profession, where you love what you do. It may take a while, but it’s worth it,” Schumer said.
A moment of silence was observed at the beginning of the ceremony for Javon R. Jackson, killed Sunday morning in an off-campus incident hours after graduating with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering.
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