Amherst awarded 474 bachelor of arts degrees on May 25
By Emily Gold Boutilier
And now the plant, resigned
To being self-defined
Before it can commerce
With the great universe,
Takes aim at all the sky
And starts to ramify.
So ends “Seed Leaves,” a poem Richard Wilbur ’42 wrote for Robert Frost in 1964. Fifty years later Wilbur rededicated the 34-line beauty to the Amherst Class of 2014.
In a strong, affectionate voice, the Pulitzer Prize winner and former U.S. poet laureate read “Seed Leaves” to the 474 graduating seniors and 5,000 well-wishers gathered on a sunny commencement morning.
President Biddy Martin drew heavily from “Seed Leaves” in her commencement address.
“Ramify, at its root, refers to the process of branching out, extending, becoming more complex, taking shape as we take aim,” she said. “The purpose of your education at a place like Amherst is not to determine the shape you will take … but to provide an environment in which you can ramify.”
In her speech, Martin credited members of the class with helping to “inspire a national movement to end sexual assault on campuses.” She continued, “In response to other urgent challenges, you have organized to address the human causes of rapid climate change. You have advocated for immigration reform. You have insisted on greater openness to a wider range of political perspectives.”
Martin encouraged the Class of 2014 to “take your decency, your earnestness, your gratitude and your hard work out into a world badly in need of all those qualities, a world in which it is too easy to be cynical.”
“Your education here is a well-earned treasure,” Martin said. She then made another reference to Wilbur’s poem: “Celebrate what you have achieved and ramify.”
The student speaker was Katherine E. Sisk ’14 (below). “I’m encouraged enough by the example you have set that the right amount of passion and compassion can make our lives great—and that even if it doesn’t, at the very least it will make them better,” she told her classmates. “That even if we fall short or sideways of what we were aiming for, we’ll be okay, and we might be happy, and we won’t let our fires die.”
What’s Next?
Here are some of the new job titles of members of the Class of 2014
Research assistant: Duke University Hospital
Associate consultant: Bain & Co.
Associate account strategist: Google
Associate Web developer: LinkedIn
Teacher: Mississippi Teacher Corps
Management trainee: Norfolk Southern Railway
Legislative assistant: Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism
Solar development program analyst: SunEdison
Going Far
An unprecedented number of new Amherst alumni—12 from the Class of 2014 and three from other recent classes—have been offered Fulbright Fellowships to teach and study abroad. They will, among other things, research political autonomy in Nicaragua; teach English in Argentina, Vietnam and Turkey; explore changing identities of Palestinian and Iraqi refugees in Jordan; and study stained-glass restoration in France.
Amherst awarded honorary doctorates to seven people during the commencement ceremony.
David Brooks, New York Times op-ed columnist and author, most recently, of The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement
Cullen Jones, record-breaking swimmer, four-time Olympic medalist and leader in efforts to bring diversity to his sport and teach young people to swim
Thai Lee ’80, president and CEO of SHI International, a $5 billion corporation that provides information technology software, hardware and professional services
Yasuo Sakakibara, an authority on transportation economics and a creator of the field of American studies in Japan. Sakakibara died in 2013; his daughter, Richi Sakakibara ’88, accepted the degree on his behalf.
Nate Silver, statistician and editor-in-chief of ESPN’s FiveThirtyEight blog. In 2008 Silver correctly predicted U.S. presidential election results in 49 states, as well as every winner in the U.S. Senate races.
Sarah Sze, a contemporary artist who creates large-scale sculptures, including Still Life with Landscape (Model for a Habitat), displayed on New York City’s High Line
Jide Zeitlin ’85, private investor, trustee emeritus of Amherst and board chairman from 2005 to 2013. Zeitlin played a leading role on two Amherst presidential search committees.