May 20, 2002
Senior class president Johanna Creswell, a neuroscience major from Lincoln,
Neb., was elected by the Class of 2002 to deliver the senior address.
"Cultivating
Humanity in These Challenging Times"
I
was once asked by a visiting prospective mom what a typical CC student was like.
This question left me at first a little tongue-tied.
How could I sum up the diversity of experiences that personify my
friends, my colleagues, my peers. I
took a deep breath and attempted to explain the unique and possibly comical CC
student.
A
CC student is a rock climber, works in community service, skateboards around,
advocates diversity, takes five day vacations every three and a half weeks,
enrolls in classes with titles like radio drama, racial inequality, and the
anthropology of food, dances around on a sunny afternoon in their bare feet,
intellectualizes on the current situation in the Middle East, and stops only for
a coffee break.
This
is your typical CC student, US.
And,
what is going to happen to us? From
our CC bubble, what is happening to this dancing, barefooted, intellectual?
The rock climber is off to advocate for gay rights as vice president in
the Ralph Nader 2016 campaign. The
barefooted student, to the surprise of her fellow friends, wears scrubs and
works on her first patient. The
skateboarder invests his parent’s money in the Nalgene Corporation, and
publishes his first novel on existentialist philosophers.
The block breaker works as an attorney for the NAACP legal defense fund
and ironically takes sick vacations in the mountains every three and a half
weeks. The community service
volunteer and liberal arts student decide to market their colossal granola
recipe, while the intellectual sends e-mails announcing her plan to open a
self-sustainable farm in Oregon.
And
what will I do? I will sit with my
cup of coffee, and smile.
These
are great people.
And
then you may ask, or your parents may wonder, “What do these features embody?
What do these qualities mean in our modern fractious world?”
One word comes to mind, Humanity. Above
and beyond everyone’s individual traits are the pursuits to cultivate humanity
in these challenging times. Humanity
is a quality or state of being humane, marked by compassion, sympathy and
consideration for others. From the
student who reaches out to others with her community service project to the
professor that spends extra time explaining the day’s material, we are all
part of humanity.
In
the last four years, I have realized that Colorado College has its own
distinctive type of humanity. This
type of humanity is one of acceptance. CC
students accept me regardless of if I remember to take a shower or decide to
profess my opinions on gender equality. My
friends have come to accept me for who I am, and I have accepted myself, faults
included. Further, humanity is
overcoming our stereotypes and coming together as a community to respond to
something that is hurtful and hateful. Humanity
is the impromptu memorial to my friend and co-worker, Jocelyn Sandberg.
Humanity
is also accepting our privileged position at a private liberal arts college and
transforming our hard work and knowledge into something beneficial for our
community at large. Humanity is
taking our position of power and realizing what our education can do for others.
To CC students, the dollar is not the bottom line, were about making the
human condition better. We are
about coming together as a family, a community for a humane purpose.
Humanity is giving back more than what we are given.
But,
how can we take this “CC humanity” out into the world?
We can forget to take a shower at least once a week, we can accept our
eccentric real-world boss, we can educate a stranger on our thesis topic, “The
Multicultural Aspects and the Environmental Impact of Synchronized Frisbee
Dancing,” we can recount one of our outlandish block-break trips, we can smile
and tell someone about the beauty of Pikes Peak, we can dress up in a crazy
outfit and encourage others to let loose, we can hug and cry with our friends,
and most of all we can be who we truly are, human.
Now,
as I stand here today, I am brought back to the prospective CC mom listening
attentively. She asks, “What do
students usually go on to do after CC?” With
the vision of success, I lean back in my flip-flops, look her directly in the
eye, and say, “Cultivate humanity.”
Congratulations
Class of 2002.
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