Bennington graduated its first class in 1936, and--unconventional from the start--the faculty at first proposed that there be no ceremony at all. The students, however, insisted that they "could not be decently graduated without a formal award of degrees" (although they also agreed that there must be "no lugubrious black gowns and mortarboards"). Commencement exercises in the seventy years since then have reflected that first class's desire for an event that "emphasized the feelings of triumph and joy." 

The members of Bennington's 71st graduating class received their diplomas on Saturday, June 3, and triumph and joy abounded during both the graduation ceremony and the commencement dinner the night before. Excerpts from the lively speeches given that evening:

Fill-in-the-Blank: Aarti Rana '06

The senior speech was given by Aarti Rana '06, whose studies encompassed both literature and social sciences, and included writing stories based on the experiences of immigrant women and traveling to her father's village in India to learn more about the experiences of the women there, with hopes of channeling the experiences into an essay. (Her writing is also tucked in the corners of this website--look for the little window with the Erlenmeyer flask).

It happened last November, while we were deep in our work, and this tented moment was on the distant horizon. It happened on TV--which I doubt any of us were watching--on Jeopardy!, in a category called "College-Podge". For $800, a contestant selected this clue: "This Vermont school chartered in 1925 boasts that its graduates have resumes as well as diplomas." The answer, of course: "What is Bennington College."

It's an answer that is also a question: What is Bennington College?

Whatever it is dear class of 2006, we've lived it and are living it for one last night. We're on the threshold of being the graduates Bennington will boast of. As Jeopardy! pointed out, we've got our resumes, and we'll get our diplomas tomorrow. So we're all set for that "world-out-there" except for one small thing: a cover letter. Yes, a cover letter, to elaborate and explain. But also to "cover", as in "wrap." Like wrap-up letter. A letter for this ending that tells the experience thus far and proposes another beginning.

So here it goes:

Applying to the world at large. Attention: Human Resources.

To whom it may concern...

[Click here to read more of Aarti Rana's speech.]

How to Be a Freshman: Glen Van Brummelen

The commencement speech was given by Glen Van Brummelen, who has taught mathematics at the College since 1999 and, as part of a fellowship with the prestigious Dibner Institute, is now writing the first history of trigonometry in more than a century. Van Brummelen is leaving Bennington to be part of founding a new institution in his native Canada: Quest University, the first private secular liberal arts college in that country. In announcing his decision, he said: "How often does one get the chance to take the greatest gift one has received, Bennington's powerful educational vision, and pass it on to a whole new organization, possibly a whole new nation? What I hope to take with me is the students' freedom to shape their own curriculum, the small classes that make true dialogue possible, and the faculty's freedom to design inspiring course offerings."

Isaac Newton was not a congenial man. Let's be blunt about this: he came across as an arrogant jerk who couldn't handle social niceties. He was distinctly not a party animal. He rarely divulged his work, preferring to live in almost total isolation. He had few friends and no significant relationships, suffered a mental breakdown and died lonely.

Yet he became the most revered scientist who ever lived, changing the way we see everything. Before Newton, I kid you not, people really believed that cannonballs fly out in a straight diagonal line, stop in mid-air, and then fall vertically straight down to Earth, landing on their victims in the style of Wile E. Coyote quivering under his umbrella. Presumably, those who could have provided first-hand reports of the actual path of the cannonball's arrival weren't in a talking mood.

Before Newton, the area of a curved shape wasn't a clear notion. Before Newton, you couldn't talk about the speed of an object that was slowing down or speeding up. Before Newton, light traveled from the eye to the object, not the other way around. Before Newton, the world was a very different place. What people saw then, immediately, in their daily lives, is alien to what we see now.

So, what made this recluse, this hermit, this misfit, into the man who peeked behind the veil and saw for the first time what had been staring us all in the face since the beginning?

I think I know part of the answer: he was the ideal freshman....

[Click here to read more of Glen Van Brummelen's speech.]

Click here to browse the archive of past campus feature stories.