Think… act… create… don’t just consume. Be something, someone, don’t simply exist. Be the perceiver, not merely the perceived. “Nothing will work, unless you do.” – Maya Angelou…. This graduating class has potential, but if we’re not there to wear Hawaiian shirts to faculty meetings, and wear camo to prom, to read between the lines, and fight for your right to party, to stand before a line of tanks, to stick a flower in the rifle… if we’re not there, to think globally, to act locally, to believe freely and believe vocally, the status quo will run society straight into the concrete that will be poured over Nine Mile Canyon.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned at AMES, it is this: Put ever so eloquently, in the words of a bumper sticker, ”Subvert the Dominant Paradigm.”

Subvert: To corrupt, to poison, to undermine the power and established authority.
Dominant: The most powerful, the most influential.
Paradigm: The pattern, the model of thought, the idea.

Sure, we’re 18 years old, we’re young, confused, and, let’s face it, absolutely terrified of life after AMES. But let those words take you where you need to be. Corrupt the outdated, prevalent system. Power the world MacGyver style, run a car on water, cure cancer with French’s Yellow Mustard and a peppermill, shake up the system, have the nerve to shatter the bipartisan gap, the wage gap, the tax gap, the gender gap, the race gap. Batter the glass ceiling with fists and stiletto heels. Break the homo hetero dichotomy. In these polarizing times, we can’t force ourselves into a binary. We have to coexist, and be change, to make change. We can’t be slaves to racism, sexism, conservatism, liberalism, socialism, theism, antitheism, ageism, appearanceism, this-ism, that-ism, Think, and be a shade of gray in a black and white in a world dominated by black and white false dilemmas.

Let me finally share with you one last thought, in the words of my hero, a humanist, a philosopher, a thinker, a socialist. The late, great, Kurt Vonnegut:

"Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies— god damn it, you've got to be kind."

We are the class of 2009. This isn’t a goodbye, this isn’t an end. For all 60-odd of us. This is just the beginning. Say hello to the future. She or he is sitting before you in a cap and gown.