August 21, 2024
President Robert W. Iuliano
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
As Delivered.
Hello, Class of 2028!
On behalf of the faculty, staff, your fellow students, and our more than 32,000 alumni, I am thrilled to welcome you to our remarkable College. You are joining a community that will not only be your home for the next four years, but, if you’re like most of our alumni, a place that will also be a lasting touchstone in your life, holding special meaning and significance for decades to come.
It may be hard to fathom as you sit here, on your first day, filled with excitement and uncertainty. But the odds are that many of the classmates seated here will become your lifelong friends.
Friends who will celebrate the good times and support you through the hard ones.
Friends who will push you when you need a gentle nudge to take that next step forward or friends who will help guide you back to solid ground when maybe you’ve ventured a little too far out on that limb.
Friends for whom you will be their cheerleader and their bedrock.
So, while it may feel awkward in these early days, get to know one another. We’ve admitted you because we think you’re pretty fantastic; let your new classmates see that side of you as well!
It’s customary for the President to offer our newest Gettysburgians some thoughts about how best to approach their time on campus. I’m going to do that, but first want to tell you a quick story about a 1950s red Schwinn bicycle.
The story’s not a new one. Maybe you’ve heard it before. There are a couple of different tellings of it, but its essence holds true across the variations.
It’s September in 1950s Louisville, Kentucky. A twelve-year-old boy and his friends bike to the city’s Columbia Auditorium. An exposition is taking place. The friends are hoping to get inside and, if they’re lucky, find some sweets left unattended.
They leave their bikes in front of the auditorium while they go to investigate but, when they return, the 12-year-old boy’s bike—a $60 red Schwinn bike he shared with his brother, one of their prized possessions—had been stolen.
Now, according to one telling of the story, the twelve-year old boy is so angry, so upset, and so hurt that he tracks down a police officer—a man by the name of Joe Martin. The boy tells the officer that if he catches the thief, he’s going to give him the whooping of a lifetime!
The officer, who also happens to run a boxing gym, knows there are better ways to direct one’s frustrations and inquires just how he’s going to do that.
What if the thief is bigger, faster, or stronger? Has the boy thought this out?
The boy has no good response, and Joe Martin suggests that he consider taking some boxing lessons. The rest, as they say, is history.
The boy was Cassius Clay, whom you may know as Muhammed Ali.
Ali went on to become the best heavyweight boxer, and in my view the best boxer, in history. But he was more than that. He was also someone who through his words and actions helped to shape our understanding of race, religion, pacifism, and so much more.
A $60 red Schwinn bike. If not for that bike being stolen, would the young Cassius Clay grow into the Muhammed Ali who changed the world? We can’t know for certain, of course—there’s no way to run a life over and see what would have been. But I suspect it’s unlikely.
So, you may wonder, what does this have to do with our Convocation ceremony?
Class of ’28, today, each one of you is starting on a new path—one that will indelibly shape your life in ways we can’t begin to predict as we gather on these hallowed grounds.
As you start down your path, I’d ask that you consider whether there are any lessons we might take from the story of the red Schwinn bike.
Let me offer three possibilities that come to my mind.
First, and perhaps most importantly, you’re not walking this path alone.
There are scores people like Joe Martin, Ali’s police officer mentor—people who will guide you along the path, perhaps in ways that will be profoundly transformative.
It may well be a faculty member, who will help you find and develop a hidden passion that will become your life’s work.
It may be a coach, someone who will not only hone your understanding of the X’s and O’s of your sport, but someone who will also help you hone the X’s and O’s of life.
Perhaps it will be a member of our remarkable dining team, who makes you feel like you’re eating with family every time you enter Servo or the Bullet Hole.
Or, a co-curricular advisor or a career advisor in our Guided Pathways program.
Or, a friend, an alum, or any other member of this community.
All it takes is not being afraid to ask for help, to accept that hand offering support.
I know how it can feel to be vulnerable, to admit that we don’t know all the answers, or that we need help. Too often, we mistake that vulnerability as a sign of weakness, but I’m here to tell you that it’s not. Rather, it is a powerful statement of our inner strength.
Cassius Clay was only twelve, but he had the courage to accept life-altering advice on that September day. Walk with this community over these next four years and I can promise you that you’ll receive similar advice—if only you are willing to open your mind and heart to it.
I see a second lesson in the story of the red Schwinn bike. It’s simply this: be open to the unexpected.
Not that long ago, my friend and former boss, Drew Faust, shared with me the galleys of a book she’s since published. Entitled, “Necessary Trouble: Growing Up Midcentury,” the book is simultaneously an autobiography of Drew’s life and a slice of American history.
After reading the galleys, I noted to Drew that her life had a linearity to it—one experience inevitably leading to the next, a coherent arc I found impressive. She gently observed that in retrospect, many paths in life look linear. But, as we’re traveling them, there are choices, often difficult choices, that we need to make. Forks in the road where we have to decide our next step.
I see some parents nodding their heads.
The truth is that life is not linear. It has twists and turns and often the most interesting possibilities are those that are completely unexpected. Be open to those possibilities.
I am certain that the young Cassius Clay had no idea he would one day “float like a butterfly and sting like a bee.” But I very much doubt he later regretted being open to Officer Martin’s invitation to take up boxing.
I’ll offer a third and final lesson, one that I think lies at the heart of the story about the Schwinn bike: it’s often the hard days that shape our path.
At the end of that September day, Ali was likely frustrated, angry, and maybe even embarrassed at having not been more protective of the bike his family could hardly afford to lose. Rather than letting this setback define him, he used it as motivation to press forward.
There’s nothing new about this lesson; I’m guessing you’ve heard it hundreds of times. But it does have special bearing as you take the first steps on your collegiate journey. There will be challenges ahead. Long days and late nights. Twelve rounds that will test you to your core.
Maybe it will be a musical score you can’t master with the concert around the corner.
Maybe it will be a disagreement with a friend or roommate.
Those moments will come. How you respond to these challenges will make all the difference.
How we respond to the challenges in our lives make all the difference.
There’s a related challenge ahead that I will end my comments by noting. In joining this community, we are asking you to do something both exhilarating and difficult: to open yourself to new ways of thinking, being, and doing.
A great education asks that you interrogate your assumptions about yourself and the world. Its goal is not to teach you what to think—that hard work is yours alone to do—but it gives you the tools to understand the world with greater nuance and then come to your own judgments about what matters to you and why.
A great education starts with a genuine openness to other points of view, a willingness to see the world through another’s eyes. Alas, that genuine openness is in short supply in our society today. Too often, those in our public life reflect an unwillingness to respect and truly hear views that differ from their own.
You have come to a great College—one that takes seriously our obligation to create the environment for conversations across difference to occur with that openness, with a sense of mutual respect, with a belief in the possibility of learning from one another’s different life experiences and perspective.
To that end, we are beginning a new program this year, one we’re calling Conversations for Change. Starting today and over the course of the year, you’ll receive information about the program, but don’t wait for scheduled events to practice the lifelong skill of listening and engaging across difference.
This is likely the most diverse community you’ve ever been part of. Take advantage of that. Take the initiative to talk to someone who doesn't look like you, who comes from a different place than you, who believes something other than what you believe. Do this in the residence halls, in Servo, when you're walking back from this Convocation.
And don’t just be the audience—help shape the program! Get involved and model the behavior we need to see more of in our society.
Finally, you’ll be invited to sign the Conversations for Change pledge. Please consider it seriously. Be bold enough to commit to making our world a better place.
Let me conclude by returning to where I started, by giving you a hearty welcome to our campus. Hard as it may be to believe, as we convene here on the first day of your collegiate journey, four years will pass in a blink of an eye. In May 2028, we will again come together as a class, here in front of Penn Hall, and we will reflect on all that’s happened and what the future portends.
Of this I’m certain: if you’ve taken to heart the lessons from that red Schwinn bike—if you’ve been open to help, if you’ve explored the unexpected, and if you’ve taken the hard times as opportunities for personal growth—you will graduate with a deep sense of satisfaction about just how much you’ve done in your time here.
Again welcome, Class of 2028. I cannot wait to see all you’ll do here.