On Wednesday, Columbia University’s class of 2009 officially graduated in a storm of flying fake apples, gummy bears, blow-up hammers, newsprint, and inflated condoms.
The Morningside campus was swathed in blue as enrobed degree candidates from each of the University’s schools sat within the gates. Students sat and stood on bleachers and chairs arranged around campus. Alma Mater served as the sprawling ceremony’s fulcrum. Faculty members, award winners, and administrators sat on Low steps.
Vice President for Arts and Sciences Nicholas Dirks emceed the event, which featured a lengthy address from University President Lee Bollinger. His appearance garnered the on-and-off chant, “PrezBo” from excited seniors.
Standing in his robes at a podium near Alma Mater, Bollinger described Commencement, the ceremony in which degrees are officially granted, as “the concentration of joy and well deserved satisfaction … [that] is as potent a force as exists in the universe. More happiness per square inch than we are likely to see again.”
After reviewing the events the graduates have witnessed at Columbia, Bollinger returned to themes familiar to him: globalization, digital media, and freedom of speech.
Addressing the changes in digital media, Bollinger said, “you came in texting, and you’re going out with a Twitter—and there is an impersonator of me.”
“Your lives will stretch across this new century,” Bollinger said, adding that “we will step on your young shoulders” to peer ahead.
Soliciting loud cheers from Columbia Journalism School students, Bollinger urged graduates to ensure a continued freedom of the press and to recognize the importance of the freedom they received at Columbia “to consider every idea and hear from everybody imaginable. And I mean everybody.”
Bollinger highlighted the need to create a “global public forum” in which notions of free speech are extended across the world. He mentioned the decline of the business model of journalism, and said that specialized Internet sources cannot replace professionals.
Provost Alan Brinkley presented the awards and honorary degrees to this year’s recipients, who included novelist Kiran Desai and P.N. Bhagwati, former chief justice of the India's supreme court.
Thus the conferring of degrees began. In this process, Brinkley called upon the dean of each school. The deans then asked permission from Bollinger to grant the candidates their degrees. After the ceremony, graduates could receive their diplomas.
Outgoing Columbia College Dean Austin Quigley presented first, and took his last chance at the podium to commend the CC students, describing them as “brilliant, boisterous, most extraordinary, most passionate lovers, most passionate lovers of learning.” In response, the graduates cheered and threw fake apples, alluding to the Core Curriculum.
Gerald Navratil, interim dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science, presented next, calling engineering “the liberal art of the 21st century.” Like the SEAS candidates, whom he called “absolutely amazing and totally awesome,” Navratil held an inflatable hammer.
Next, Barnard College President Debora Spar rose to face a “D. Spar”-chanting class of 2009. She asked permission to confer “the brilliant, the bold, and the beautiful women of Barnard College” with an “eternal degree of liberal arts.” Students responded by throwing gummy bears and Teddy Grahams into the air, an homage to the college’s mascot, Millie.
Peter Awn, dean of the School of General Studies, asked permission to confer the last of the undergraduate degrees to GS students. He referred to his “urbane” students on bleachers as “perched on Olympian heights.” In response, they waved checkered flags.
Brinkley then introduced the presenting deans of the graduate schools, who had different ways of describing their graduates—often in puns.
To School of International and Public Affairs Dean John Coatsworth, his candidates are “passionate about their international affairs and great lovers of public service.”
To College of Dental Medicine Dean Ira Lamster, who paused for a minute as bubbles lingered, the candidates of his school “demonstrate superb oral hygiene and are completely painless.”
Columbia Business School Dean Glenn Hubbard called his candidates “global, entrepreneurial, and non-TARP receiving.”
Columbia Journalism School Dean Nicholas Lemann commended Bollinger on his good news judgment with regard to the topic of his speech before asking him to grant degrees to students “who will remake their world.” As Journalism students tossed strips of newspaper into the air, Lemann said, “notice the newsprint while we have it, folks.”
Columbia Law School Dean David Schizer asked permission for students with “justice in their hearts and stare decisis in their eyes” to graduate, telling Bollinger that they are “ready to join you, Mr. President, as a graduate of Columbia Law School.”
Lee Goldman, executive vice president for health and biomedical sciences and dean of the faculties of the Columbia University Medical Center, said his students “mastered the anatomy and physiology required for lovers … lovers of the medical profession.” He then led them in the recitation of the Hippocratic oath.
Linda Fried, dean of the Mailman School of Public Health, was greeted with a flurry of condoms, as she pronounced her students to be “relentlessly global, socially committed, [and] politically astute.”
After Bollinger agreed to confer degrees onto the candidates of each school, the academic party moseyed into Low Library to the tune of "New York, New York." Columbia’s newest alumni fled the confines of their seating areas to greet their families.