Commencement

"SINCE I ARRIVED HERE IN HANOVER MANY PEOPLE HAVE GREETED ME by saying, 'lt's a beautiful day in this neighborhood,'" Commencement speaker Fred McFeely Rogers '50 noted during the June 9 ceremony on the Green. "Well, indeed, it is a beautiful day." As the sun shined on, Rogers, creator and host of the children's television program Mister Rogers'Neighborhood, recalled the time he spent in Hanover as a student living in 101 Middle Mass before transferring to Rollins College. But his main message was of the importance of love. He urged the graduates—1,101 bachelors degrees and 479 masters and doctoral degrees were conferred—to contemplate how it is that human beings can make destructive choices, such as those that lead to ethnic cleansing and suicide bombings, and positive choices that give rise to healing. He urged the new alumni to think about the people who have influenced them most: "We just don't get to be competent human beings without a lot of different investments from others."

President James Wright stressed that graduates were about to enter a world quite different from the one they knew before Dartmouth. He encouraged students to take on the challenge of making the world a better place. "Despite the tragedies that have screamed out for our attention and commanded our tears, your four years here have also been marked by a world filled with love and caring,' he said. Our task is to make certain that these things continue to dominate."

QUOTE/UNQUOTE "Dartmouth will forever be the most important reference point on any map." JONATHAN AMMAN '02, IN HIS VALEDICTORY ADDRESS JUNE 9