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Celebrating the Class of 2020
There were so many things the Haverford community missed about not being on campus in the final weeks of the semester, but the biggest one of all was Commencement.
While our seniors did not get to experience their hard-earned moment of pomp and circumstance in front of a crowd in Alumni Field House, the College honored the achievements of our newest graduates in an online celebration on May 30.
In advance of the event, which was live on Zoom and YouTube, the College sent out boxes to Class of 2020 members with diplomas, caps, and tassels. In addition, a full commencement program, posted online, listed all of the graduates and their senior thesis titles by major, along with College, departmental, and other honors and awards.
Those offering remarks at the online event included student speaker Annie Connolly-Sporing ’20, and staff speaker Margaret Schaus, Lutnick Library lead research and instruction librarian. “In all of our time with you, we’ve been inspired by your energy, wide-ranging interests, smart insights, and generosity,” said Schaus, who challenged the graduates: “Let’s take our experience of shared community and live it everyday, wherever we go.”
In her remarks, Associate Professor of Psychology Shuwen Wang—who noted that the Class of 2020 was the first in Haverford history to include graduates with a degree in environmental studies—said she and her fellow faculty are “so deeply grateful to have students like you who display the very best of what this community has always aspired to be” and deeply admire “your courage in pressing on with your education despite the difficulty of this time.”
“Do not underestimate your potency in impacting this world,” Wang said. “You will help how we shape and navigate, and how we emerge from this time, building a world that is a better and far more worthy one for all of us.”
President Wendy Raymond, after conferring the degrees (and offering an appropriately long pause so that friends and family members at home gatherings could cheer the graduates), left the Class of 2020 with a poem by Native American poet Joy Harjo titled “Remember”:
Remember you are all people and all people are you. Remember you are this universe and this universe is you. Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
—E. L.
President Wendy Raymond confers the degrees during the celebration of the Class of 2020.
To watch a video of the celebration (with captions in English, Spanish, and Mandarin), read the program, view a timeline of the Class of 2020’s four years at Haverford, and more, go to: hav.to/celebrate20. Look for a date to be announced for an in-person commencement for the class tentatively scheduled for spring 2021.
