Welcome and Remarks
Commencement
Daniel F. Sullivan - May 16, 2004

Colleagues and distinguished guests, faculty, trustees, parents, friends and family of graduating seniors and masters candidates, members of the wider St. Lawrence family, and - most of all - graduating seniors and masters candidates, whether you are summa cum laude, magna cum laude, cum laude, or “thank you Lordy,” a very warm welcome to this, the commencement ceremony of the Class of 2004.

As only some of you in the audience know, this is an incredibly special day for Ann and me - a commencement even more important to me than my own from St. Lawrence way back in 1965, the middle of the last century! Our youngest child, Adam, is in this class, and he has made us very, very proud.

I asked Adam what I should say today and his reply was quick and straightforward: “Dad, if you could find a way to be just a little bit funny that would be a big improvement!”

So in Adam’s honor I’m going to try to couple the serious side of my remarks with a little levity. You can tell me later if it worked.

Let me begin, then, by focusing on some of the things I hope you graduates have learned in your time at St. Lawrence. For example, I hope you have learned that words matter and that it’s important say clearly what you’re thinking. Here’s an exchange between Ole and Lars to illustrate:

Ole called his neighbor Lars and said: “I’m gonna build a brick fence about da same size as yours. How many pallets of bricks did you get?”

“Ten,” says Lars.

So Ole buys 10 pallets and proceeds to build a beautiful fence for Lena. When he’s finished, Ole’s surprised to find he used only four pallets. He calls Lars and says: “Hey, Lars, I yust finished wit buildin’ dat fence, and I’ve got six pallets of bricks left over.”

“Ya, Ole,” says Lars, “so did I!”

Margaret Kent Bass told us all Monday night, in the way only she can, another way in which words matter. She said in the lecture in which you honored her as the Owen D. Young Outstanding Faculty Member:

Can we disagree with civility and courtesy? Must we so often use words as weapons? And words can be weapons. Words wound. Words often wound in ways more devastating than other sorts of weapons. Heart wounds are often irreparable; most are always slow to heal. Sometimes we do not think before we speak. Most of us err in this way, but when we know what we owe, we’re quick to repair the damage our words have caused. We apologize with sincerity.

There is such wisdom there. I so very much hope you were there to hear her entire message Monday night.

We know also that you have learned some mathematics at St. Lawrence. Here’s a comment on mathematics and common sense by Shel Silverstein, one of the great educational philosophers. You can find it in Where the Sidewalk Ends, and it’s entitled “Smart:”

My dad gave me one dollar bill

‘Cause I’m his smartest son,

And I swapped it for two shiny quarters

‘Cause two is more than one!

And then I took the quarters

And traded them to Lou

For three dimes - I guess he don’t know

That three is more than two!

Just then, along came old blind Bates

And just ‘cause he can’t see

He gave me four nickels for my three dimes,

And four is more than three!

And I took the nickels to Hiram Coombs

Down at the seed-feed store,

And the fool gave me five pennies for them,

And five is more than four!

And then I went and showed my dad,

And he got red in the cheeks

And closed his eyes and shook his head -

Too proud of me to speak!

And, of course, many of you learned about alternative social and economic systems at St. Lawrence. Here is Marshall Dodge and Robert Bryan, of Bert and I fame on Downeast Socialism:

Eban Robay went into Boston to the Tremont Temple on Saturday night to hear Norman Thomas speak about socialism. Next Monday he was preaching socialism to Enoch Turner over the back fence:

“You know, Enoch,” he was sayin’, “under socialism people share everything.”

Enoch then asked, “You mean, Eban, if you had two farms you’d give me one of them?” “Ayup, Enoch, if I had two farms, I’d give you one of them.”

“And Eban, if you had two hay rakes you’d give me one of them?” “Ayup, Enoch, if I had two hay rakes I’d give you one of them.”

“Now Eban, if you had two hogs would you give me one of them?” “Darn you Enoch, you knows I got two hogs!”

I have told and laughed at that story for over forty years, but of course it makes light of one of the most significant issues all societies and economic systems face, and that is how much income and wealth inequality can and should there be if one wants a society to which the stakeholders are committed. Political sociologists have made plain for years the inverse relationship between income and wealth inequality, on the one hand, and the possibility of democracy, on the other. When I graduated from St. Lawrence, the United States ranked about 30 th among industrialized countries in its level of income and wealth inequality. Today, we are 2 nd. I worry a great deal about the future of democracy in America .

Not enough of you spent time making music while students here, but all of you, I know, benefited from the wonderful singing that is such a tradition at St. Lawrence. Here are the words from one of my favorites, found in a St. Lawrence Song Book published shortly after the turn of the century (the 19 th to the 20 th that is!). It is entitled “Sucking Cider Through a Straw”:

The prettiest girl I ever saw was sucking cider through a straw.

Said I to her, “My dear, what for do you suck cider through a straw?”

Said she to me, “Why, don’t you know that sucking cider’s all the go?”

Then cheek to cheek and jaw to jaw, we both sucked cider through a straw.

And if by chance the straw did slip, I kissed sweet cider from her lip.

To the best of my knowledge, no one in your class has written a St. Lawrence song - perhaps that is a good thing! The Laurentian Singers will not be singing that song here today - but keep tuned for one of their concerts during our upcoming sesquicentennial!

I know, too, that many of you have learned something about religion here at St. Lawrence, especially in these last few years as we have watched the world situation together. This is an excerpt from one of my very favorite texts on religion. It is by Red Jacket, Seneca chief and orator. “In 1805 a Boston missionary society requested Red Jacket’s permission to proselytize among the Iroquois settlements in northern New York State .” Here is some of Red Jacket’s reply:

Brother . . . . You say you are sent to instruct us how to worship the Great Spirit agreeably to his mind, and if we do not take hold of the religion which you white people teach, we shall be unhappy hereafter. You say that you are right, and we are lost; how do we know this to be true? We understand that your religion is written in a book; if it was intended for us as well as you, why has not the Great Spirit given it to us, and not only to us, but why did he not give to our forefathers the knowledge of that book, with the means of understanding it rightly? We only know what you tell us about it. How shall we know when to believe, being so often deceived by the white people?

Brother, you say there is but one way to worship and serve the Great Spirit; if there is but one religion, why do you white people differ so much about it? Why not all agree, as you can all read the book?

We also have a religion which was given to our forefathers, and has been handed down to us their children. We worship that way. It teacheth us to be thankful for all the favors we receive; to love each other, and to be united. We never quarrel about religion.

Brother, we are told that you have been preaching to the white people in this place. These people are our neighbors; we are acquainted with them; we will wait a little while and see what effect your preaching has upon them. If we find it does them good, makes them honest and less disposed to cheat Indians, we will then consider again what you have said.

What more is there to say, really, about the need for multi-cultural understanding? Many, many courses at St. Lawrence focus on this issue. Can you think of anything more important to have learned in your time here than that, even if all you have learned is how much you don’t yet know on that topic?

Finally, I want to say something about this place, the North Country. Residential liberal arts colleges, of course, are profoundly shaped by place - by their physical location and the history and culture of the region in which they reside. You have heard me say many times how St. Lawrence in particular is shaped by its North Country location: the American liberal arts college located closest to the capital of a foreign country, near also to the St. Lawrence River and the Adirondacks, with all of their beauty and the strength of North Country people captured so wonderfully in the paintings of Frederic Remington, born and buried in Canton. Being here also means remembering that we were on the Underground Railroad as John Brown and his sons spirited runaway slaves from Lake Champlain through Lake Placid and then across the border at Massena. It also means having a strong work ethic and a lack of pretension. There is nothing snooty about the North Country . There is instead a kind of honesty and straightforwardness that I have always found refreshing - uplifting, even.

We can also laugh together knowingly - and perhaps even with pride - when someone describes our four seasons as early winter, mid-winter, late winter, and next winter. But we also know deeply of what Irving Bacheller, the famous turn-of-the-century novelist, member of the St. Lawrence Class of 1882 and for many years university trustee, wrote near the end of his great novel of the North Country , Eben Holden. Describing a winter homecoming, he said:

The north country lay buried in the snow that Christmastime. Here and there the steam plough had thrown its furrows, on either side of the railroad, high above the window line. The fences were muffled in long ridges of snow, their stakes showing like pins in a cushion of white velvet. Some of the small trees on the edge of the big timber stood overdrifted to their boughs. I have never seen such a glory of the morning as when the sun came up, that day we were nearing home, and lit the splendour of the hills, there in the land I love. The frosty nap of the snow glowed far and near with pulsing glints of pale sapphire.

You arrived on campus in August of 2000 - eyes filled with enthusiasm and promise, anxious to make your way and find your place - the first St. Lawrence class to begin here in the new millennium. I hope indeed that you have found your place, that you will think of St. Lawrence as home throughout your life no matter where you are and what you are doing, and that you will come back home here many, many times in the years to come. We are going to miss you, the great class of 2004!

Thank you!