Gretchen Cryer, actress, playwright, lyricist, and visiting drama teacher at CC 
Gino Strada, renowned war surgeon who founded the humanitarian aid organization Emergency
J. Donald Haney '33, Colorado Springs attorney, champion for the developmentally disabled 
Melody Babbitt, tireless employment adviser, crisis- intervention counselor, and special-needs advocate in El Paso CountyProud to Give Back
The e-mail came the night before Commencement: “Bring a dollar bill to tape onto President Celeste as you receive your diploma. All the money received will go to fund the AppreCCiate Scholarship.” More than 300 of the 500+ graduating students came to the ceremony Monday morning armed with currency, and by the time the last name had been read, Celeste was covered in 368 bills.
It was a fitting finale for the class of 2006. Even during an event to celebrate our accomplishments, this group sought a way to help on a larger scale. As Class President Balin Anderson ’06 said during her speech, “The legacy of the class of 2006 is our creativity and activism. We learned the discipline and freedom that come from academic engagement, and in return, we contributed advocacy and ingenuity to our community.”
Like the class of 1968, some of whose reflections are published elsewhere in this Bulletin, we are a class of activists. And even during the blur of graduation weekend, while hearing advice from our parents, inspiring plans from everyone around us, and professors’ comments about how proud and happy they are, it seemed perfectly natural that we accompanied the transition from students to alumni with activism, by helping foster socioeconomic diversity at CC.
Commencement speaker Gretchen Cryer, an actress, playwright, and lyricist who has taught drama at CC for several years, encouraged graduates to live within their new communities as artists: “people who start with nothing — a blank page, an empty space devoid of movement, an empty canvas, silence — where … there is only the unarticulated urge,” she said. “There, at that point of verdant nothingness … artists reach inside themselves and … allow the life force to come through them and find unique expression.”
Religion Professor Sam Williams, in his Baccalaureate address, also challenged graduates. “Recognize the social constructs that trigger your reactions to those you think perverse. Strip off the labels ... Consider the possibility that (others’) views and values have an internal coherence and validity as defensible as yours.”
Armed with our CC experiences and the advice we received, it is now off to the real world. College graduation is a time of transition, and the three days that CC provides for celebration and reflection sped by. Now each of us is thrust into the “real world,” to live as activists and artists on our own.