You are the sesquicentennial class, and this commencement marks the conclusion of the University’s celebration of 150 years of service to the City and the world. We remain today what we were 150 years ago: the City’s first University. We began in a one-room structure. From our first days, we welcomed immigrants and the sons and daughters of immigrants. Then, they were mostly Catholics from Italy and Ireland. Today, we welcome immigrants of all faiths, mostly from Asia and Latin America. The University celebrates the rich diversity of its student body as an indispensable learning resource for citizenship in the global village that is our world.

In 1874, the University shined the first electric lights on a darkened City from the top of the tower of St. Ignatius Church, then on Market Street. A contemporary noted that the light could be seen at a distance of two hundred miles. USF continues to shine the light of reason and compassion on a world darkened by thickening clouds of poverty, hunger, disease, repression, war and violence.

The 1951 USF football team — on whom we conferred an honorary degree this year — refused a bowl bid that would have unquestionably earned this untied and unbeaten team the national championship. They refused to take the field without their African American teammates. For them, integrity and the inherent dignity of every human being was more important than the promises of fame and fortune that all too often distort the judgments and taint the lives of less substantive persons. The University cherishes this legacy of courageous commitment to human solidarity and basic principles of decency.

In 1862, St. Ignatius College students visited the sick in San Francisco’s hospitals. The 1930s found USF students working with prisoners at Alcatraz and San Quentin prisons. In the 1950’s USF students reached out to residents of the Tenderloin. USF continues to expand its service to the City, and has extended its outreach across the globe to places like Mozambique and South Africa, Mexico and El Salvador, Cambodia and Viet Nam, as our faculty and students immerse themselves in the life experiences of the world’s poor and marginalized. The University builds on its legacy of academic rigor and service to humanity; a legacy of educating your minds and hearts so you may change the world.

You are the heirs of the legacy that we celebrate this sesquicentennial year, and you are the promise of its fulfillment. In the face of the world’s overwhelming problems, let your lifelong mantra be that of Edward Everett Hale: “I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something. Because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.” Do not refuse to do the something that you can do.

With regard to the legacy and the promise that you represent, let me conclude with the story with which Toni Morrison began her acceptance speech of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993:

There was an old, wise blind woman. The daughter of slaves, she lived alone in a small house outside of town. She had a reputation for wisdom and was honored far and wide.

One day some impudent youngsters decided to play a mean trick on the woman. They came to see her and posed a question, ‘Old woman, I hold in my hand a bird. Tell me whether it is living or dead.’

The old blind woman did not reply, for she couldn’t see them, much less what they were holding.

They repeated their question. ‘Is the bird living or dead?’ She knew their motive and she knew that if she said the bird was living, they would squeeze and kill it to prove her wrong. If she said the bird is dead, they would throw it at her to prove her wrong. She waited so long to reply that the youngsters snickered, thinking they had her stumped. When she finally spoke, it was slowly and her soft voice was a reprimand. She said, ‘I don’t know whether the bird is dead or alive, but what I do know is that it is in your hands. It is in your hands.

The legacy and the promise are in your hands, and they are good hands.