Speaker urges Mary Baldwin graduates to ‘become significant’

By Jimmy LaRoue

Published: May 19, 2008

STAUNTON
It wasn’t about to rain on their commencement.
Sandwiched in between light drizzles, 316 Mary Baldwin College students received degrees and honors during a two-hour graduation ceremony on the Barbara Kares Page Terrace.
Amid waves and whoops from the myriad family and friends on the hill – digital cameras in tow, snapping shots of their every move – graduates smiled as they marched, wearing cap and gown, toward their seats.
“This is your day,” MBC President Pamela Fox told them during the school’s 166th commencement.
Senior Class Secretary Myisha Joy McCray, reading from scripture, implored fellow students to “get wisdom and, whatever else you get, get insight.”
The commencement litany that followed reminded graduates that this time in their lives is “an hour of transition that demands a masterful performance.”
Following a hymn from the Stonewall Brigade Band and the awards presentations, commencement speaker Musimbi Kanyoro greeted the crowd by saying, to laughter, that she would be brief, “no matter how long it takes me.”
As a gust of wind nearly blew the diplomas off the table, Kanyoro, who directs the Population Program for the Packard Foundation and is the former general secretary of the World YWCA, called for graduates to “move from being successful to being significant.”
In her message, Kanyoro, a native of Kenya, compared the students to giraffes, because “you hold your heads up and get degrees.” She said students need to think big and bold, become peacemakers, move toward solutions while staying away from apathy and raise money for worthy causes.
She told students how to know when they were being bold enough.
“When others are retrenching, your ideas are getting bigger and bolder,” Kanyoro said. “When others are talking about shrinking and cutting back, you’re talking about growth.”
As others are waiting out storms, she said, a bold person is “unleashing the power of change” and doing more with less, not the other way around.
She said their vision “must be to create a different world for generations to come.”
“It is a vision of a world worth working for, worth developing the power and the leadership to change, so that we might live to see a better future,” Kanyoro said.
Now that they had become successful, she said, could they “dare become significant?”
The many people in attendance then showered the graduates with long applause and shrieks of joy.
After moving their tassels from right to left on their caps, graduates heard Fox urging them to enter a “rapidly changing world of global complexity, significant challenge and enormous potential with joy, anticipation and sincere affection.”
As the graduates exited the ceremony, the pause in the rain ended, and with it, they left with what Fox said was an opportunity to be a “transformational force for positive change in this world.”