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Welcome, everyone. Graduates, faculty, staff, alumni, trustees,
family, friends, welcome to the Class of 2016 Syracuse University Commencement.
. I will be followed in this welcome and fair
well by the outstanding president of the State University of New York College of Environmental
Science and Forestry my friend Quentin Wheeler. This is a happy day.
Each of you who are graduating today got here because of your own hard work, each of you
who are graduating today also got here because of so many people who have faith in you.
Some of those people, faculty and staff are sitting in front of you and working all around
this Dome and outside of it. Some of the people who the support you and
have faith in you, friends, family, classmates, are right behind you, are seated next to you,
where once again as always, they have your back.
Some of the people who have supported you and are watching this ceremony through the
webcast are all around the world. I thank every single person here in the Dome
or around the world who helped each of you arrive at this glorious day.
Syracuse University is full of dedicated faculty and staff and alumni and trustees who give
their hearts and their souls for this place and especially for the students in it.
These are people who are there when you need them.
There are many such people here today, some of whom are retiring from positions as you
graduate. They include interim Provost Liz Liddy, Dean
Ann Clarke of the College of Visual and Performing Arts, Dean James Steinberg of the Maxwell
School, Interim Dean Stanton of the iSchool, and the incomparable Floyd Little.
Please join me in thanking all of them. .
[Applause] .
Class of 2016, as you graduate from Syracuse today in front of all these luminaries, I
would ask you to reflect on one person. Otto.
. Otto is our mascot.
. Otto is an Orange.
. Otto has three important thing to say to you.
First, Otto is unique and that is just fine. .
Some about people would say Otto is fat. Some people would say Otto is is a fruit.
Some people would say Otto has no clear gender. .
Does that mean Otto is not part of us and Otto does not help define us?
No. If I have learned one thing about you, the
graduates of the Class of 2016, is that the only thing that is truly normal about a Syracuse
student is that every single one of you is unique.
That is what is so wonderful about this sprawling idiosyncratic and inspiring place, there is
no one normal, other than that at our best each of us can be unique.
So now you go out into that cold world, some days you will look at yourself in the mirror
or you will look at a new co-worker or someone you meet and you will find yourself seeing
someone who is fat or strange or different. At that moment I want you to stop and think
of Otto, I want you to say that's Otto, Otto is just a part of who we are at our best.
. Second --
[Applause] .
Second, Otto has a disability and that is just fine.
As all of you know, Otto cannot talk. Otto never talks.
Even when someone drops a keg of beer on Otto's foot, which I have seen --
No words come out. .
Just because Otto cannot talk doesn't mean that Otto cannot do things.
Of course not. Otto is the everywhere, an integral part of
this place, not really a mascot at all, but part of our spirit.
Otto can't talk, but Otto somehow speaks for us all in victory and in defeat.
So now you go out into that cold world, please remember that a warm Syracuse at its best
didn't just include someone with disabilities, Syracuse embraced someone with a disability
and empowered that person with a disability to make us better.
. [Applause]
. We all have our secret and not so secret challenges,
some of them do not show on the outside. They may not rise to the level of disability,
but we can let them hold us back just the same.
. I have several.
I have a deep irrational anxiety about speaking in public.
. This is really true.
But at Syracuse I just look to Otto. Otto can't speak and yet Otto runs out in
front of 30,000 people in the Dome and ten people at a local pancake breakfast every
day, Otto just does the job which is usually to make people better.
Whatever your challenge, whatever your disability, please remember Otto.
. Third, and finally, underneath Otto's skin,
Otto's peel, there is a decent human being. One of the joy of my job is that once in a
very long while I get to do something that nobody else at the University gets to do.
This year I asked to meet Otto. Not the mascot, but the human being underneath.
. And when I did, I discovered that Otto is
really a group of selfless students just like you.
They have majors and jobs and dreams and challenges and disabilities.
They are members of teams and churches and clubs and societies.
And on top of everything else they do, they go out there every day and smile as Otto.
They hug a kid, they lead a cheer, they help out.
Otto it turns out is like each of you, so much of this place was driven by similar groups
of selfless students, from SU ambulance to zanbonie revolution, from student association
to University union. So now you go out into the cold world, remember
that this place was made so much better when you did something extra beyond your regular
job with a group of selfless colleagues. You can do that in the world too and make
it more like Syracuse. Class of 2016, Otto is graduating today.
I mean that literally, sitting among you looking just like you in cap and gown are selfless
students who were Otto. But I also mean that everybody who is graduating
today is Otto to me. Even though you look the same right now in
cap and gown, I know that underneath that skin is a wonderful unique person who can,
like Otto, show kindness to strangers and sometimes thereby entertain Angels without
knowing it. Class of 2016, whatever you look like on the
outside, we at Syracuse will always remember one thing: Including when you are in need
or when you have a triumph or a tragedy, every single one of you, whatever you look like
on the outside, whatever you were born with, whatever you have become, as far as we all
are are concerned, your peel will forever be Orange.
Thank you and farewell!