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you. Ma. Yeah. How are you? I I I I

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OK. You want me to get it for you? Hello. Graduates, friends, Holy Cross, like many small liberal arts colleges across the nation, is slow to change. Even fads take longer to catch on at a school such

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as ours. For example, streaking hit the nation during the spring of 1973, but the idea did not reach Holy Cross until the early winter months of 1974. In keeping with our competitive spirit, however, during the first week of March, there were over 500 loyal crusaders streaking

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our campus, although some were forced to wear hats and scarves. Co-education at Holy Cross was also a belated event. After 123 years as an all-male institution, Holy Cross started to move toward integration of the sexes in 1967 by holding a co-education day. This, I presume, was

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to ensure that men could learn while sitting in the same classroom as women and that women would be able to contribute to a learning atmosphere. Two years later, coeducation Week followed, and proving successful eventually led to the official enrollment of women students at Holy Cross in

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1972. Has progress in the domain of academics been as delayed? When today's graduates were born in 1954, Holy Cross was offering its students a quality liberal arts education. Today we have just received the same. Does that mean that we are even farther behind in academics than

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in streaking? And if so, how can we dare to continue calling this medieval mode of education liberal? Dr. Charles Frankel, the noted philosopher at Columbia University, a staunch defender of the liberal arts, recognizes what he calls the four great indictments against the liberal arts. First, Dr.

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Frankel says, The liberal arts reflect the myth of man's independent rational mind and the myth that it's in the use of his mind that his true happiness and highest virtue consists. Second, the liberal arts, he continues, are authoritarian because they are imposed on students. Third, they're

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useless. Fourth, and probably worst of all, they are elitist. Dr. Frankel quips, it ought to be plain. That the liberal arts are as anachronistic in the year 1976 as corsets. Indeed, they share similar origins and have about the same functions to stifle and conceal. Yet I

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believe a Darwinian philosophy prevails, which says that whatever kind of education survives must be the best, and here we are in 1976. The liberal arts are still thriving and we are still choosing to study them. I believe that Dr. Frankel's explanation of this phenomenon was correct.

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We continue to study the liberal arts because not only are they fascinating fields, but they do indeed liberate our minds. The liberal arts provide us with the necessary skills for facing the future. A skill more necessary today than ever, the ability to transcend present circumstances to

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approach problems in a productive way. We are part of a generation that had no major causes to fight during our college years. Many have called us apathetic, yet ours is a generation which had been nurtured on turmoil, scientific advancement and violence before our arrival on college

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campuses. Our parents and teachers have experienced all the traumas of the past two decades with us, but the difference lies in our perspectives. From the year that we, the graduates of 1976, were born. Until our freshman year of college, the United States was engaged in almost

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uninterrupted combat. War did not shock us, but peace was a new concept with which we had to learn to live. We were 3 years old when Sputnik was launched, triggering a worldwide technological revolution. We were too young to notice, but via the omnipresent and omnipotent television,

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we were able to witness space flight after spaceflight until in July of 1969, we watched in awe as man walked on the moon. As high school students, most of us realized that we were observing one of the greatest scientific achievements of all time, yet we were

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not surprised. Why should we have been surprised? Our years of development and learning had taken place during the decade of science and technology. Unfortunately, the constant emphasis on technological advancement during these vital years resulted in a void in our awareness of ethical commitment. We were also

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bone weary from violence. Who among us has forgotten November 22, 1963? For 4th graders, it was a frightening and indelible experience to witness the tears shed by an entire nation over the loss of its beloved leader, but it was only the beginning of the brutality that

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would flash across our television screens and newspapers. Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, Cambodia, the population explosion, the energy crisis, the Watergate affair, these are all included in our childhood memories. We have lived through so many crises and causes by the time we were college freshman that

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it was time to turn inward and spend time on the study of human values. Beyond their immediate concerns, what we learned from the humanities is that the human spirit is a fundamental fact of experience. The world that we regard as solid is merely a creation of

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the human spirit. The liberal arts give us an expressive means of objectifying the clash between the individual and the world which surrounds him. Poets and painters have been expressing their experiences directly for centuries, while even works of history, philosophy, and literature involve contemplation of the human

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experience. The liberal arts offer not only a view of man's actions and thoughts of the past, but they demonstrate a manner of teaching and study. Through an analysis of universal man, a student is liberated from the pressures of time and place and self. He is forced

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to analyze, criticize, and question the human experience through internal means rather than under the restrictions of today's guidelines or yesterday's rules. The ability to crystallize one's thoughts, form an opinion, and express oneself cogently is a skill that arises from a liberal arts training. And so contrary

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to many critics' laments, a liberal arts education does not imply a thorough knowledge of several obscure subjects, but an approach to learning that is carried into every phase of our education, forcing us not to accept anything as final, but to weigh evidence, analyze, and question. Any

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numbness and apathy that was beginning to permeate our existence when we entered college was stripped away by the liberal arts. It is a grueling and evolving experience to pour through a volume for hour upon hour trying to draw some thread of comprehension from the printed page,

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whether it be literature, math, or biology. Then to interpret and take a stand on the material presented exhausts the student even more. Yet most demanding is moving this critical and questioning approach out of the libraries and into our lives. The internal conflicts that have arisen on

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this and other campuses reveal that we are able to live the liberal arts tradition. We challenge each other. We disagree among ourselves. We demand emphasis on human, not only economic values. As we leave Holy Cross College today, we are leaving behind many close friends, Jesuits, lay

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faculty, and students. However, we are bringing with us an invaluable heritage from our four years here, a liberal arts education, an attitude that will help us to confront and overcome the problems that we will encounter in the future. Let us not be discouraged, but optimistic about

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the world that is awaiting us at the bottom of College Hill. Let us pray for courage. Let us pray for the patients to bear in mind that there are two tests of a good education. One is what we do with it in the marketplace, what it

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contributes to our role as a citizen, as a person living in a social world of other persons. The other is what we do with it in our solitariness, how reliable it is when we are alone, when we have no company to fall back on except our

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own. We have received an education that prepares us not only to live in the world, but to live with ourselves. Honorary degrees are the most tangible testimonials that a college can bestow upon those whose achievements and persons she esteems. In this her 133rd year of educational

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service to church and country. The College of the Holy Cross is happy to honor thus the following candidates for degrees, Hori Cussa. Walter Jackson Ong. You have probed the processes of human learning and communication from the oral oral to the present electronic age. Your extensive studies

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have disclosed to us the consequences for the human person affected at each level of this transformation from tribal orientation to an interpersonal sense of the other. Convinced that every excursion into the past forces a greater concentration on the present. You have led us to a more

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confident understanding of ourselves and the knowledge explosion by your analysis and explication of literature from Homer to Ezra Pound. Linguist, anthropologist, cultural critic, psychologist, and theologian, you are indeed the Renaissance man of our technological age. As you sound the tonalities of the word in all its

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resonances, you fill us with new hope that becoming more open to ourselves and our fellow man, we can become more open to God and His word. Acknowledging you, therefore, as a truly Christian humanist, Jesuit educator and priest, the College of the Holy Cross is pleased to

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proclaim you Doctor of Letters. Edward Arthur O'Rourke. Just 50 years ago, almost to the day, here on Fitton Field, you as a freshman took the role of the murderous Polymester in the

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Greek presentation of Hecuba. So impressive was your performance that thereafter in your years at the college, you were cast as the villain in every dramatic production. This histrionic talent with your sharp logic, precise diction, and ready wit made you a fearsome adversary in the more real

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encounters of intercollegiate debate. Graduated with the highest honors, you were also voted the man who has done most for Holy Cross by your classmates. Rhetoric, the art of persuasive speech. is a highly personal, practical, and partisan art. On the lips of a man of integrity, high

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intelligence, and noble purpose, it is irresistible. It holds a precious element of self-commitment that belies the devaluation it suffers in the argot of the marketplace today. Such integrity, intelligence, and personal commitment you brought to the world of business with notable success. And to your voluntary public

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service with the Economic Development Council on behalf of the problems besetting the school system of the city of New York. These same gifts and energetic devotion you have put at the service of the Holy Cross. Excellent leader that you are, your dedication is evident not only

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in word, but in deed. You have provided for the establishment of the Edward A. O'Rourke Chair to honor and encourage the best traditions of scholarship and teaching in the liberal arts. Wherefore, with pride and gratitude, the College of the Holy Cross is pleased to confer upon

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you a devoted son, the degree Doctor of Humanities. Mildred Faye Jefferson. When in 1951, you completed your studies, And became the first black woman graduate of Harvard Medical School. It was not evident to most Americans that we as a nation might one day revise

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our thinking about the sanctity of human life and the extent and limits of civil civil society's responsibility for it. 25 years later, As a doctor, surgeon, teacher, and eloquent leader of the National Right to Life Committee, you are awakening your fellow citizens of all religious and

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political persuasions to the understanding that a human life is not always and in all circumstances sacred. Then intrinsically it is of no account. Embryo, infant, child, adolescent. Adult, senior citizen are terms by which we describe varying stages of growth and dependency along the continuum of human

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life. But the worth of each one of us is established in the beginning and flows constant to the end. You have sparked a strong determination in the hearts of many. That instead of destroying life at any stage, we must destroy the conditions that make life intolerable.

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And instead of becoming the hard society, we must become the just and compassionate one. As a young woman growing up in Carthage, Texas, you set yourself a guiding principle. Decide what you wish to do most. Then set out to do it. Because you have not hesitated

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to speak out on behalf of life and justice for all, the College of the Holy Cross is pleased to confer upon you the degree Doctor of Humanities. I 20 years after the Supreme Court of the United States held in Brown

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versus the Board of Education, That racial segregation in public schools violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. A case came before you in which it was established that the school committee of the City of Boston had for many years deliberately segregated school children by

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race in violation of the Constitution and the laws of this Commonwealth. The aftermath has called to mind the apocalyptic vision of the poet Yeats in which things fall apart, the center cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. The best lack all conviction, while the

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worst are full of passionate intensity. Those who might have taken the initiative in fashioning non-judicial remedies for this long-standing violation of law, chose instead to stand in opposition to any remedy or to remain conveniently silent. In the performance of your sworn duty to support the Constitution

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of the United States. You have held steadfast to the values of the center. Knowing full well that the remedies to which the federal court into the into the scourge slums of Mariel. And began to serve the poorest of the poor, with a spirit so indomitable, a

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faith so intractable, a love so abounding that your joyous example has overcome not only Calcutta, but the world. Faced with a mass of starving and dying people, you see only the dignity of each destitute, dying in squalor on the pavements of nightmare cities, of each abandoned

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child, of each mutilated leper. And so you give them through your hands, their daily bread. And by your understanding love, you give them peace and joy. Your efforts have taught us that love is a fruit in season at all times and within reach of every hand.

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And you rebuke our modern feeling of personal powerlessness in the face of unremitting human needs. Mother indeed to the poor. You have become the mother too of nearly 1500 missionaries of charity who in the geography of compassion, have extended your work of love to 5 continents.

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Your achievements which surpass all hope are surely due to the conviction that nothing is impossible with God. In honoring you, mother, we honor Christ in the distressing disguise of the poor. And therefore, the College of the Holy Cross is privileged to bestow upon you the degree

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Doctor of Ministry.