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For Immediate Release
May 16, 2009
For more information, contact
Nicholas Mascari
(585) 395-2754
nmascari@brockport.edu
Margaret Robinson Preska Commencement Address
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Thank you President Halstead, Provost Huot, Council Chair Mr. Turner and other distinguished members of the Platform Party. It is an honor and privilege to join with you in celebrating the achievements of these individuals in the 59th Graduate Commencement of Brockport students about to be declared successful in their work to earn degrees here.
Graduates you are well aware of the joy that comes with the recognition that you have done the whole thing! Your family members and friends and faculty celebrate this joyous moment with you. Together with you, they individually and collectively look into the reality towards which you commence your journey today. There is hope and there is fear.
With you I feel this incredible joy—inspired energy along with hope and fear about whatever it is each of us will encounter as we take new jobs, as we build family relationships, as we grow more active in taking our citizenship responsibilities in our neighborhood, our state, our country, our planet, our universe.
We all know only too well that the times of our lives right now are threatening. With the poet Houseman, we notice that “things fly apart, the center will not hold.”
With our spiritual leaders and the lessons we have learned from history, we know that all threatening looming problems are also opportunities for growth in knowledge, for using what we have within us to turn the problems into pathways for improvements.
How would we do this? We use the gifts we have. What are these gifts? Education, now and continuing; Family and friends who care; Belief in yourself; Information as never before available; A college that cares about her graduates, each of you.
How do we use these gifts? Each graduate chooses his or her own way to use the unique gifts you have.
What empowers you to do this? The gift of hope, the most realistic gift of all
Why should we embrace hope when all around us we see depressing, difficult conditions?
Indeed we must acknowledge that there are real threats in each of our lives, and sometimes real drawbacks to whatever forward path we would choose to be the best that is within us and to giving to the world the sum of your unique gifts.
Sometimes the way seems dark. Each of us has learned to recognize the closing of a door to the room in which we want to live our lives.
Hey, if one door closes, get up and look for another door, another opportunity dressed as a problem. One of the most challenging lessons to learn in life is knowing how to know when there is no key to unlock a slammed door and how to save your time, your psyche, your money by moving to the other doors that we can pass through.
One day in my freshman year here, such a door-slamming occurred for me. It happened with mocking laughter that was the response when I told friends that I had decided to be a college president, inspired by my observation of my Brockport President, Dr. Donald Tower.
That laughter hurt, especially as it was accompanied by the chastising statement “Margie, you know that girls from farms can’t be college presidents.” Someone else said “and you don’t have any money.”
Well… My parents and brothers and sisters rescued me. Whatever good work I wanted to do, they were certain that I would find a way to work at what I wanted to do.
And so 26 years later, as a result of this family support, the support of my husband and our children, the efforts of my Brockport faculty and the faculty in my graduate schools, the gifts I had been given led to finding the right doors to open.
My friends that long ago day also gave me something very beneficial. They forced me to know that challenges are everywhere, and they make us focus our attention and energy on the goals that are most important beyond however many closed or open doors we discover.
Let us consider briefly two other groups of people with whom I have worked in the door opening business.
In 1992 I began working with retired Soviet military officers and active Russian academics in the military college system and the Russian civilian university system. I heard their stories.
Anyone, including me, must be in awe as we hear their stories of remaining loyal to their obligations while working steadily to change their arbitrary dictatorial governing and social system.
We all know enough about the Soviet system to realize that it was incredibly dangerous for an individual to revolt. But, they patiently used the system to open doors through which they changed the system.
And these students, faculty and retired officers made their society ready for a leader like Gorbachev who could describe the steps needed to be taken to create the climate for democracy.
It was like a revolution without bloodshed. Now the hard work of transformation continues. But we must honor what these people did to risk their own lives to create a future where life would be better for themselves as individuals, their families, neighborhoods, country and world.
Or let us consider the United Arab Emirates where less than 10 percent of the population was schooled beyond the third grade when they became a country 42 years ago.
Through a massive effort lead by their ruler, they replicated our own American experience of building an involved, happy, successful populace by requiring education for boys and girls through primary schools, then gender-separated secondary schools and higher education at college and university levels for all men.
Hmmm—what’s wrong with this picture? We can only praise the results of this educational pathway- mostly. The United Arab Emirates did become a strong, self-sustaining, wealthy nation with seemingly happy people looking as if they lived contentedly and productively and safely within this traditional, fundamentalist Muslim culture.
But what about the 50 percent of the population—girls and women—who were denied access to a university education? “Well,” said some, “educated women are dangerous.” and “Surely educated women would change things and our lives will not be good.”
However , their ruler, His Excellency Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al-Nahyan, the President of the country, saw it differently. Some say he was heavily influenced by Sheika Fatima, the 3rd of his 11 concurrent wives. We may never know the full extent of her influence on what came to pass.
However, we do know that the hopes of women were employed more fully in society when they were gifted with the edict from their ruler that, “Women shall be educated.”
And so it came to pass 12 years ago that this girl from a farm with no money went to work in presiding over the opening year of Zayed University, the first university for women in the Emirates.
Now they are a strong established institution with hard-working alumnae moving other employers, neighborhoods and country into the realization that educated women are a gift, rather than a danger to their society.
So, what do we learn from our life experiences? How do we know that Hope is Realistic? Of what use are our gifts?
From the Russians, from my family, from the people of the United Arab Emirates, we learn that people who have hope and use their gifts wisely can lead through open doors to a better world.
Brockport faculty and tradition gave me a doorway to a future which took this young, first-generation American farm girl on into a world of ever-increasing joy and achievement. Now, it is my hope for you that you continue to succeed.
May you each use all that Brockport has given you to move you ever forward into realizing and giving to the world the highest and best within you.
The College at Brockport, State University of New York
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