Good Morning Class of 2026! 

It is so exciting to be here on one of, if not the most important day of our lives so far. To those in the audience and those watching on the livestream – our families, friends, teammates, mentors, professors, and more – thank you for loving us. We know that receiving a college degree is never a solitary achievement. Your calls, care packages, attendance at sports games, performances, and presentations propelled us across the undergraduate finish line in times when a degree felt like an impossible achievement. To my family, especially my beautiful, strong grandmothers: You are my heart. This degree is as much yours as it is mine. I’d also like to thank my SwatSwim family, the Spanish and Religion Departments, as well as the Admissions Office. I would not be on this stage without your support. 

Speaking of the Admissions Office, while working with them this past year, I learned that Swarthmore publishes eight qualities on their website that they elevate when reading the applications of prospective Swatties. This list says that we are intellectually curious and enthusiastic about learning. We are creative and proactive problem solvers. Generous towards others. We are civically engaged and willing to work hard and seek help. We contribute to campus life. Have sustained commitments. And we are open minded, both in general and to the liberal arts writ-large. However, there is no one student who embodies all eight qualities. Rather, these qualities intertwine with each other into one intellectually passionate, distinctively “Swat” student body. Each student with their own inner light. No one’s shining brighter than anyone else’s. Each light contributing to a community that after four years, we can only describe as singularly Swarthmore.

Intellectual curiosity and enthusiasm for learning is the bedrock of this student body. Put plainly, we love learning for the sake of learning. We’ve brought animated conversations about our senior theses to parties with loud music bumping. Our Sharples-sits turn into hours-long philosophical debates when we should probably get to work on that problem set. Many of us just couldn't get enough of it, and are now on our way to grad school, law school, and med school. 

And while being an Engineering and Theater major, a History and Spanish major, or a Biology and Dance major is a defining feature of what it means to spend four years at Swarthmore, our passion for learning also led us to sleepless nights and unimaginable levels of stress. Our time in college meant navigating our own high-achieving standards, with many of us discovering the necessity of seeking help for the first time in our academic careers. 

While our love of learning is mostly a blessing and sometimes a curse, it bleeds into all other facets of how we have chosen to spend our time over the past four years. 

Swatties are generous with our time by supporting friends’ contributions to campus life and sustained commitments. We attend ensemble concerts, rivalry sports games, the Sigma Xi poster session, pARTy, the RnM showcase, and many more campus events not because we are obligated, but because our curiosity towards that which we are not familiar with and our love for our friends beckons us into new spaces. 

Our generosity also reaches beyond campus. We’ve seen it every day engaging with students tabling at Sharples, those who use creative and proactive problem solving to raise funds for mutual aid supporting genocide survivors in Palestine, and to also promote fundraisers towards those detained by ICE at home.

Many of our commitments also lie within civic engagement. Those in the student group C4, or the Campus Coalition Concerning Chester, collaborate with our neighboring community to fight against the devastating environmental and health effects of our nation’s largest incinerator on Chester’s predominantly low-income, minority population. 

We have also witnessed and engaged in peaceful protest for social conflicts that matter to us, both on campus and in front of city hall. Our student body has carried the Quaker values of peace and equality to advocate for the rights of workers, of those in the LGBTQ+ community, for indigenous peoples, and for undocumented individuals. We have sung for climate justice and have fought against racism, continued genocide, and state violence. 

For many of us, our civic engagement has provided us with another layer of learning, one that connects the theory we read in class, the Said, the Foucault, and more, to community building that goes beyond a shared goal of pushing for social change.  

Yet given what our Admissions website tells us, we know we are more than a list of attributes published for prospective students to reference. Just like we know the world we are about to enter is far more complex than the beautiful 425 acres we’ve lived on for the past four years. 

We are living in a reality where our current presidential administration sees free speech and peaceful protest as a weakness rather than a strength. The open mindedness that our professors, classmates, coaches, religious, and minority leaders have nurtured in us over these four years is currently the object of political ridicule. State violence has become the response to community care. 

And while this reality constantly looms overhead, we are also undergoing a radical shift in our personal lives. In this transition, many of us are battling for competitive jobs whose qualifications are constantly changing. Homework is now obsolete. When we leave this ceremony, we will no longer be surrounded by a high volume of peers, and will instead be pushed to make friends by actively seeking them out. Those who go on to pursue additional education will do so outside of Swarthmore, in a drastically different environment with discipline-specific academic goals. 

How we navigate a broader context of chaos and violence amidst a future at our first jobs, our first days at grad school, or our first time truly not knowing what lies ahead, matters. It’s scary. The personal unknown is coupled with the broader unpredictability of a rapidly evolving world stage. 

What I’d like to share with my peers today, above all else, is that you must refuse to stay comfortable. It will be hard and exciting and wonderful to adapt to life after Swat. Do not stop once you feel at home. Your enthusiasm for learning, your problem solving skills, your generosity, civic engagement, willingness to both work hard and seek help. Your contributions to campus life, your sustained commitments, and your open mindedness are powerful strengths waiting to be wielded. Use them to fight against the injustice we see bombarding headlines and massacring communities. Use them towards immersing yourself in the passions you have discovered and nurtured during the past four years. Use them in whatever chapter lies ahead to create a beautiful life for yourself, your friends, and your families. 

Use them to keep your inner light aflame. 

Thank you and congratulations to our wonderful Class of 2026.