Multiple keynote speakers, including students and MSSC staff members, discussed diversity and the MSSC community before students were individually handed gold and red graduation cords to wear at University-wide Commencement on Sunday.
1. ‘Oh, the places you’ll go…’
Krystal Warner, the senior program coordinator for the MSSC, first addressed the family and friends in the audience, reminding the crowd of the graduates’ hard work.
“I just want to let your families and friends know that if your student ever neglected to respond to one of your text messages or emails or phone calls, it wasn’t because they were partying,” she said. “It was because your students were working hard and tirelessly to make sure our multicultural and diverse community had a strong and everlasting presence at GW.”
Warner then delivered what she described as “a few words of wisdom” to the graduates, reciting part of Dr. Seuss’s “Oh, the Places You’ll Go.”
2. A Quaker tradition
Before Michael Tapscott, the director of the MSSC, delivered his keynote address to the graduates, he asked the audience to participate in a Quaker tradition. Graduates and parents were asked to introduce themselves and shake hands with five people in the room they didn’t know.
Tapscott began his speech by explaining to the parents in the audience why he enjoys interacting with students because he is a father with a child in college.
“I get to have 1,000 sons and 1,000 daughters each year,” he said.
Tapscott then gave graduates small pieces of advice on a range of issues from exercise to compassion. He told graduates to remember their parents and “honor them, hug them and text them.”
He went on to tell the graduates that they represented the “full breadth and range” of diversity at GW and their cultural competency has prepared them to be successful after graduation.
“No matter what people tell you, you already have what it takes to be successful,” he said.
3. Cultural keynotes
The MSSC picked several students to give short keynote speeches during the ceremony for each of the different groups represented at MSSC, including the East Asian, Latino, LGBT, South Asian and black communities.
Regina del Carmen, who represented the East Asian community, spoke about the close friendships she made as president of the Philippine Cultural Society at GW and compared her time at the MSSC to her love for the ocean.
“My life has definitely become a lot more colorful because of the people I met here,” she said. “The different groups at the MSSC vitalize GW and give it beauty and soul, just like how the different schools of fish bring diversity and excitement to the ocean.”
Aylin Feliz, who gave the keynote speech representing the Latino community, described how the MSSC supported her both during the death of a family member and as she studied abroad in Argentina her junior year.
“Take a look at all the difficulties and challenges you’ve faced along the way, and how you overcame them,” she said. “Overcoming those challenges helped us continue to grow in order to create the best versions of ourselves.”
Floyd Jones gave the keynote address as a representative of the black community and discussed his reaction after learning of St. Louis County’s grand jury decision not to indict Officer Darren Wilson for the shooting death of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown.
“For the first time in my life, I didn’t understand the value of who I was,” Jones said.
Jones discussed the discrimination he experienced throughout his childhood and how he decided to stop ignoring the “blatant racism” he faced once he came to GW.
“Let’s not wait for the next act of violence to stand together. Let’s not wonder and ask ourselves who is the next to die before we enact a revolution,” Jones said.
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