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The Yale Alumni Magazine is owned and operated by Yale Alumni Publications, Inc., a nonprofit corporation independent of Yale University. The content of the magazine and its website is the responsibility of the editors and does not necessarily reflect the views of Yale or its officers. |
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Buckley entertains at Class Day
Author and humorist Christopher Buckley '75 eschewed the inspirational in his address to Yale's Class Day ceremonies on May 24, opting instead for a lighthearted speech (PDF) laced with gallows humor about the economy into which this year's seniors are graduating. "This hasn't been the most excellent of millenniums," said Buckley to a crowd of 1,300-plus graduates and their families on a mild afternoon on the Old Campus. "You entered your teens just around the time of 9/11, and now you're entering the job market -- to use an ironic term for it -- during the great recession. I can hear you saying, 'Thank you, prior generations, thank you so much.'" Buckley, whose memoir about his famous parents (William F. Buckley Jr. ' 50 and Pat Buckley) is currently on the bestseller list, also took the opportunity to apologize "to God, to country, and to Yale" for using "a certain four-letter word beginning with the letter that designates a failing grade" in his capacity as class historian at his own Class Day in 1975. Buckley said he had quoted verbatim a graffito from the Cross Campus Library men's room. The cleaned-up version, he said, would be "God didn't create the world in seven days. He bleeped off for six days and pulled an all-nighter." The next day, Buckley said his father gave him his graduation gift: "a typewriter, four of whose keys had been removed." But Buckley wasn't without advice for the graduates. After quoting Yogi Berra's famous line "When I see a fork in the road, I take it," Buckley suggested the seniors do the same, warning that "at some point on your life's journeys, having taken some fork or other, you'll probably look up and see a large red sign that says 'Wrong Way.' Don't worry about it. Just make sure the brakes work. Sometimes it's exciting, going the wrong way. And it's fun watching the faces of the oncoming drivers." After Buckley's speech, the balance of the ceremonies was devoted to the awarding of Yale College teaching prizes and student prizes and to presentations by the seniors. Leading the winners of student prizes were Rhodes Scholar Jarrad Aguirre, who won the Alpheus Henry Snow Prize and was one of the winners of the David Everett Chantler Award; and Emily Morrell, who won the James Andrew Haas Prize and was one of the winners of the Roosevelt L. Thompson Prize. The highest athletic awards went to swimmer Alex Righi, football standout Mike McLeod, and crew captain Christina Person (who will become a Marine Corps officer after defending her crew's national championship next week). Earlier in the day in his address at the baccalaureate service (and in two identical services on Saturday, May 23), President Richard C. Levin '74PhD analyzed the troubled economy "as an economist and as your president," acknowledging that "the world economy is a mess" but citing areas where Yale graduates can help make a difference: in education, through organizations like Teach for America; in promoting sustainability; or in "building a career that contributes to greater international cooperation and understanding." In his first public appearances since his surgery for prostate cancer on April 30, Levin told the graduates, "The education you have acquired here has given you the flexibility to take on the widest array of possible challenges, and it has given you the depth and rigor to make a meaningful difference wherever you choose to apply your talent." |
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