Some maxims never lose their power, actress and activist Whoopi Goldberg proved to University of Vermont graduates during the school's 193rd commencement today.
"Remember 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you' --- and you'll be just fine," Goldberg said. "It will get you through this life with your chin up, your eyes open and your mouth working when you want it to work, not when your emotions want it to work."
The wildly cheered commencement speaker also received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from the university, conferred by outgoing President Thomas P. Salmon. Salmon said her artistic achievements are well-known, but UVM was honoring her especially for her humanitarian efforts. She has hosted many benefits to raise money for the nation's homeless and hurricane victims, and has been awarded the Women in Film's Norma Zerky Humanitarian Award, as well as many other honors.
Maintaining a sense of one's self while slogging through life's hard and ugly times is the most formidable challenge they'll face, Goldberg told the 2,000 graduates. Young people have little time to enjoy their youth these days; instead they're immediately pressured into becoming "tense adults," she said. "There are many, many tense adults -- we don't need any more tense adults...Make sure you remember who you are and all the stuff that's made you laugh and dance and jump around."
"Some of y'all are going to turn Wall Street on its ear and some of y'all are going to discover things that make people feel better and some of y'all are just going to go out and clone people," she said. "And some of y'all are going to nurture other young minds," a remark that brought cheers from the future teachers of the College of Education and Social Services.
Goldberg said her generation believed it would change the world. "And then we got hungry," she said. "But there's nothing wrong with making money. There's nothing wrong with it as long as you remember that... what you make has to be shared, and what you take has to be given back somehow."
She congratulated the class of '97 on achieving something that will be harder to achieve in the future. "Now you have the responsibility to pass the information on, you have a responsibility to listen and the responsibility to be an individual, not part of a pack but an individual who has an opinion, can voice an opinion, hear an opposing opinion and still be cool."
And she urged the new graduates to keep in mind those coming behind them--including grandmothers. Herself a grandmother, she asked 77-year-old Mary Evelti, who received her bachelor's degree today, to stand up and be recognized. "That's what I'm talking about," Goldberg said, "a sense of self."
UVM awarded 1,559 undergraduate degrees, 320 graduate degrees, 83 medical degrees, and 37 fifth- and sixth-year certificates today.
Robert W. Slocum, Jr., president of the Class of '97, announced the senior class gift, a landscaped brick courtyard outside the Cook Physical Sciences building. The class raised about $34,000, more than three times the next largest class gift in the past.
UVM was chartered in 1791. It was the first college or university in the United States not to give preference to any religious sect in its charter and the first to admit women to full membership in Phi Beta Kappa. Its eight schools and colleges have 7,375 undergraduates and 1,130 graduate students. The College of Medicine has 375 students.
Located in Burlington, between Lake Champlain and the Green Mountains, UVM is a small, comprehensive university that combines the academic heritage of a private university with service missions in the land-grant tradition.