As you mark the end of your college career and enter the next phase of study, work, or service, the world you enter is confronting big challenges, asking big questions, and confronting big conflicts. Consider just a few of them:
The proliferation of nuclear weapons
Devastating destruction caused by hurricanes, tornadoes, and earthquakes
The loss of privacy and security of personal information
Crumbling political systems
Sexual assault and harassment
Acts of terror and violence
Addiction
Socioeconomic, racial, ethnic, gender inequality.
A quick scan of news headlines, talk shows, or social media feeds on any given day will reveal the complexity of the world we live in and the challenges we are called to confront. Some of these are issues that have only emerged in recent years, so we are still in the earliest stages of studying and understanding them.Other problems have plagued humanity for centuries and are all the more daunting because solutions remain elusive.
Today’s challenges require new knowledge, new strategies, and new leaders; today’s challenges call for Scripps College graduates. You are the solution to problems that don’t even exist yet. You are the answer.It would be understandable for students graduating today to survey the landscape of this world and think it’s hopeless; to wonder what difference you could possibly make; and to decide to just focus on your own plans, purpose, and path—and many of the students graduating from other colleges this weekend will do just that.But I know that will not be enough for you. You will continue the work you began while at Scripps to design a better future, not just for you and those you know and love, but for those you don’t even know, who may seem “other” and distant from your own experience, but who also deserve economic security, quality healthcare, educational opportunities, freedom, and peace. The good news is that you won’t tackle these challenges without resources; you have tools, especially after your Scripps experience, that will enable you to make a difference in ways you’ve never imagined. Your tools include:INTELLECT—As your capstone projects demonstrate, you are able to produce great work. Your intellect has been honed and sharpened as faculty have challenged you to exercise your mind in the pursuit of more and deeper knowledge. You will use your skills as a writer, researcher, and orator to deepen others’ understanding and to expand your wisdom.INSIGHT—Your humanities foundation has given you the ability to make connections between the past, the present, and the future.
You will use your knowledge of human civilization, institutions, and systems to see beyond facts, figures, or circumstances and to interpret them in unique ways that take into account context, relationships, and perspectives.INQUIRY—Your Scripps education has equipped you to ask questions. From the time you arrived, you have been challenged to use questions as a mechanism to clarify, enlighten, advocate, and problem solve. This skill will help you to navigate ambiguity, understand more fully, empathize more deeply, and overcome road blocks for yourselves and your communities.INNOVATION—At Scripps, you have been grounded in and exposed to the arts through your coursework and the rich array of exhibitions and performances at the Claremont Colleges.
The creativity that has been embedded in your educational experience will help expand your sense of possibility and help you to envision novel approaches to the complex issues you encounter.INFLUENCE—Your time at Scripps equips you to come to the world with a more complex view of what leadership, power, and influence can be. Having spent four years in a place where those things are not defined by gender, you are particularly well situated to imagine and produce different patterns of influence yourselves. You will use that influence to change conversations, write new rules, shake up priorities, and open doors for others.Many of you have spent the last few months looking at the world, wondering what it will offer you, and where your place in it is. Know that the world, too, is looking at you, wondering what you will offer it. Answering that question, of what you bring to the world, will help you also find the answer of what the world has for you.
So, as you prepare yourself to enter the fray rather than stand on the sidelines, gird yourself for the messy, frustrating, beautiful work of living fully and producing good.I charge you to continue the work that you began here. Remain confident Stay courageous Sustain hope You do not have all the answers, but you ARE the answer. Congratulations Class of 2018!