John Foster Dulles slammed communism.
Sydney H. Schanberg dared young people to be different. John Hope Franklin urged them to make a difference.
The men made their statements to men and women in black caps and gowns on the grounds of Union College. Graduation ceremonies have always been a time for wisdom, and celebration.
Union's latest class left the roost on Sunday, with memories of higher education fresh in their minds. Members of other Union classes likely remember their time near the Nott Memorial.
In 1948, seniors were still smoking the traditional class day pipe in the college's Jackson Gardens. The pipe itself was nontraditional – it was a model of Union's library building.
The guys graduated on June 13, 1948, and listened to Dulles deliver the commencement address. At the time, the statesman was Republican foreign policy spokesman.
Dulles, then 60 and five years away from serving as secretary of state under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, told 161 graduates that western democracies and communist states differed politically because democracies had developed processes for peaceful change. Communism, he said, relied upon violent methods.
“So, communism is to be rejected, not because it seeks change, but because it seeks change in ways that are evil and self-defeating,” Dulles said.
He added: “I hope the day will never come when the American nation will become the champion of the status quo. Once that happens, we shall have forfeited – and rightly forfeited – the support of those who dream and want to make their dreams come true.”
MOMENTS TO REMEMBER
Union ceremonies have always had their nice moments, some humor, and even a little controversy.
On June 15, 1958, Sally Brown Van Schaick became the first woman to receive a bachelor of arts degree from the college, then in its 163 rd year of existence. Van Schaick, a mother of five, had taken evening classes to earn her place in the graduating class.
A few civil engineering seniors placed tassels on white hard hats when they graduated on June 16, 1985. Others taped fraternity letters to the top of their mortarboards. These statements had to please Schanberg, The New York Times columnist and advocate for the different drummer.
“Step away from the crowd,” he said. “Don't accept someone else's truth and . . . don't keep your mind taped shut.”
Historian Charles Austin Beard gave a class another piece of advice on June 10, 1935 – and suggested one more reading assignment for seniors.
“By way of preparation for admission to this practical world, young graduates will find some guidance in one of the most profound books now standing on our library shelves,” he said, “a treatise on sociology so deep in its wisdom that superficial readers sometimes take it with a light heart and treat it as a piece of fiction. . . . Lewis Carroll's 'Alice in Wonderland.' ”
The 199-member class responded with a spontaneous burst of applause.
In 1965, more then 700 college alumni were back on campus for the June 5 commencement. Some wore costumes; they marched in a parade with music provided by the Draper and Scotia-Glenville high school bands. The Class of 1950, with 41 members in attendance, won the Anable Cup for the largest turnout.
Now, the parade is held during Union's alumni weekend.
At least for one year, drama was part of commencement. On June 12, 1971, a group of protesters crashed graduation during days of the Vietnam War. One of the unexpected guests, an English teacher at Union, waved a Viet Cong flag. Parents, graduates, other faculty members and campus police joined the ruckus.
A BETTER SOCIETY
For most graduations, the idea is more about hope. And duty for the future. That was Franklin's tone. The University of Chicago history professor and author pushed for a better society when he spoke to Union's Class of 1976 on June 13, 1976.
“Join in the exciting, rewarding, if burdensome, enterprise of working with all your strength and with all the resources at your command to make our social order an Eden on this earth,” Franklin said, “one in which even the least among us can have the security of personal dignity, equal justice and the enjoyment of the fruits of this earth.”