Remarks by President Robert Oden Jr.
Carleton College Commencement, June 13, 2009


Welcome, everyone, to the One Hundred Thirty-fifth Commencement in the proud history of Carleton College. The 135th Commencement. Really? Many of you will know that Carleton was founded, as Northfield College, in 1866. Even more of you will know that we’re now nearly half way through 2009. So, can this be but our 135th Commencement?

It can be and it is: Carleton did not hold its first Commencement until 1874, eight years after the College was founded, and we skipped another potential Commencement a few years later.

Welcome faculty, staff, students, Carleton Trustees, family members, and – and this most of all – welcome to the uncommonly engaged Class of 2009. That adjective, “engaged,” is among Carleton’s defining traits. Engaged with life, engaged with learning, engaged in making a difference for the world, is just what those in the Class of 2009 have been throughout their time at Carleton, and this same engagement we confidently predict of you far into your futures.

We will pause again in the course of our ceremony to congratulate all in the Class of 2009. Even so, I wish still to begin with a hearty congratulation to all of you and to your families. If you, members of the Class of 2009, owe more than can readily be said to the Carleton faculty and staff, you owe as well a debt beyond repaying to your families. Hence, let me ask everyone in the Class of 2009 please to rise, face your families, and give to them the ovation they deserve.

And welcome to this special place. I join you in giving thanks for this day, a day which allows us to be outside, and also in giving thanks for those who worked so hard over the hours past to make possible our being outside. Inside, no matter how fully decorated with maize and blue; inside, no matter the number of banners emblazoned with the College’s name; inside we could be anywhere. Outside, here beneath these oaks and maples, here just to the east of the Bald Spot; outside we could only be at Carleton.

We prize today’s weather conditions the more and we thank a favoring Providence the more for allowing us to be outside because our spring, here in Minnesota, was, for some weeks, markedly slow, and cold. And that’s unusual? Not at all: A slow, cold spring is annually and predictably true here in Northfield; we are, after all, in Minnesota, and mightily grateful for our Minnesota home. But, the annual miracle again, a matchless Minnesota spring, burst upon us about a month back, the more vibrant for its very brevity, and recent weeks have been quite spectacularly lovely, sufficiently so that a matchless Minnesota spring has lifted any lingering feelings of late-winter, early-spring, disgruntlement.

Today, we feel quite the opposite. So, what is the opposite of disgruntlement? Obviously, it’s gruntlement. I woke up this morning feeling quite profoundly gruntled, and I trust you did, too.

Ardent student of Carleton history that I am, I was delighted to receive not long back a graduating senior’s account of Commencement a century ago. I am now going to try your patience, I am going to read for you the entirety of the graduating senior’s report on Commencement a hundred years ago: “Commencement exercises were in the Congregational Church [as they were for decades until they were moved to Skinner Chapel] with orations by the valedictorian and the salutatorian, and friendly advice from the President of the College.”

That’s it, that’s the full report on Commencement a century ago.

“Friendly advice from the President of the College,” wrote the student recorder a hundred years ago. Good advice thought I.

I do have some advice for you, members of the Class of 2009, advice and a plea, both of which I am going to precede with a brief narrative. The narrative is to the point of my advice. The tale is also much on my mind because of the death earlier this month of Wade Johnson, ’07, who would have understood, been engaged with my narrative, because Wade helped me teach fly-fishing.

Earlier this spring, on one glorious morning, I found myself wading chest deep in one of our area’s equally glorious spring creeks. I was chest deep in Wisconsin’s Kinnickinnic River, the Kinni as it is known to those of us who love the river, home to thousands of wild brown trout per river mile. I was there fishing soft-hackled wet flies to these trout, and fishing with some success.

But it’s not the trout I wish this morning to accent. It’s the water. The Kinni is a spring creek, one of the priceless jewels of what is called the Driftless Zone. The Driftless Zone refers to that area where Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Illinois meet which escaped glacial drift and hence the flattening of the landscape which characterizes much of this area. The Driftless Zone begins just a few miles east of Northfield, as the landscape falls off into a series of glades and valleys filled with the clean, clear water which only spring creeks know.

We call these rivers “Spring Creeks” because their water comes from that which seeps slowly through limestone rocks, then arises in springs along and beneath the rivers. The water in which I was wading and fishing this spring fell as rain long ago. Long ago? How long ago? Much of the water in our local spring creeks fell as rain before you, members of the Class of 2009, were born. Some of the water in which I was wading fell as rain before those of you behind the Class of 2009, the parents and relatives and friends of the Class, were born. And a fair amount of this water fell as rain before I was born, now more than sixty years ago.

This is old water, vintage water, water to which we might attach a vintage year as we do for wine – there, in the Kinnickinnic River, there is water, ’87; water, ’56; and even water, ’46 and before.

And where is this going? And the point of my advice and my urgent plea to the Class of 2009 is what?

Here’s where talk of vintage water is going: When we mess up, when we damage some patch of our environment, we cannot simply wash away the mess. The mess we have made goes some place and there it remains for years, for decades, for centuries. What we do today, the damage we do to the earth, the still inchoate efforts we have today begun to do to repair the earth, matter and they matter for a very long time ahead.

Had those in my generation felt more keenly the obligation we owe to our environmental home and then acted upon this obligation, we would all today find the earth a far more balanced and welcoming and fertile home, a home with a future.

You, members of the Class of 2009, have a rare chance to succeed where we erred. What you do today and tomorrow will matter for years, for decades ahead. We need you to become the stewards of the environment that we were not. Upon your engagement with the present, for the sake of the future, we are counting.

Thus concludes my advice, my plea. Thank You.