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A singing send-off at Senior Breakfast
By Tim Stoddard
Senior Breakfast has earned a reputation of showing a different side of the University’s leaders, and this year proved no different. In his address to the more than 2,000 guests in Metcalf Hall on May 2, Chancellor John Silber may have caught some people in the audience off guard with his tongue-in-cheek comments. Silber noted that he has always looked forward to Senior Breakfast for many reasons, “not the least of which is that at this time of year, a new editorial staff takes over at the Daily Free Press. Hope springs eternal for an editorial board that will not just call me arrogant and irascible, but will appreciate my true merits and my innate sensitivity.”
As the laughter subsided, a deadpan Silber continued: “All I ask for is ein bischen Verständnis, a little understanding. I try to sympathize with your position, and I wish you’d try to sympathize with mine. It so happens that I inspired Mac Davis to write a song that admirably expresses the predicament that I’m in.” Apologizing for “practicing music without a license,” Silber then sang a few lines from Davis’ “It’s Hard To Be Humble.” ( “Oh Lord, it’s so hard to be humble when you’re perfect in every way. I love to look in the mirror, ’cause I’m gettin’ better lookin’ each day. To know me is to love me. I must be one hell of a man. Oh Lord, it’s so hard to be humble, but I’m trying as hard as I can.”)
Senior Breakfast is an occasion for the graduating class to celebrate accomplishments and be entertained as they enter their final two weeks before Commencement. The event was emceed by Margaret McKeon, head coach of the women’s basketball team, which this year beat the previously undefeated University of Maine for the America East conference championship. McKeon has earned a reputation for being a fiery presence on the court, expressing her opinions at full volume and with unambiguous body language. In his introduction, Silber referred to her as “the tigress of Boston University, compared to which I am nothing more than a nice, even-tempered old man.” To illustrate this, Silber treated the audience to a short video montage of McKeon close-ups at basketball games this past season. The clips show her clad in a black leather jacket, swinging her arms in forceful gestures and screaming directions at her players. The pumped-up, passionate coaching has paid off: in her four years at BU, McKeon has transformed the once-struggling women’s basketball program into a national contender that this spring earned its first-ever bid to the NCAA tournament. Reflecting on the hard work that went into that transformation, McKeon encouraged the seniors to take a note from her Terrier athletes and bring dogged determination to their post-BU pursuits.
While humor was a dominant ingredient at Senior Breakfast, there were also more serious moments in Silber’s speech. Discussing the potentially dangerous world that the seniors will soon be entering, he noted that “this graduating class is fated to live under the shadow of 9-11 for many years to come. For the war on terrorism may prove to be a Thirty Years War, or even a Hundred Years War. It will be your task to find happiness in a world that is fraught with uncertainty and contains a level of contingency in our daily lives that we have not previously known.”
Silber added, however, that seniors won’t have to acclimate to that world. “Let no one tell you that after graduation you’re going to enter the real world,” he said. “That’s the world you’ve been in for the past four years. The ideas, opportunities, and temptations you’ve experienced here give you a good indication of what Peggy Lee said was ‘all there is.’ Just refuse to settle for any theory or any view that reduces your dignity as a human being. Let no one strip your real world of its richness and complexity.”
The chancellor then announced that political columnist and television commentator George Will will deliver this year’s Commencement speech, and that the annual Baccalaureate address will be given by BU trustee Karen Elliott House, a senior vice president at Dow Jones & Company and publisher of the Wall Street Journal. Will and House will receive honorary degrees, along with pianist Van Cliburn, composer and conductor Lukas Foss, scholar and art collector N. David Khalili, businessman and honorary BU trustee Gerald Tsai, Jr. (CAS’49, GRS’49), and Jon Westling, president emeritus of BU.
Several senior awards were also announced at the brunch. W. Norman Johnson, vice president and dean of students, presented the University Community Service Award to Meghan Fugate (CAS’03). “Meghan has devoted most of her BU career to introducing her colleagues to volunteer service,” he said. Fugate has worked for four consecutive years with the First Year Student Outreach Program, helping incoming students to learn about service opportunities throughout Greater Boston. As a volunteer at the Community Service Center’s food rescue program, she helped salvage thousands of pounds of unused food every week from bakeries, restaurants, and grocery stores and distribute it to meal programs and food pantries in the area.
As this year’s program manager for the BU Children’s Theater
program, Fugate led more than 70 volunteers in creating original variety
shows with music, dance, and acting that were performed at the end of
each semester for hundreds of young children at hospitals and shelters
all over greater Boston. “Whether it be through theater productions
for children or cleaning nature’s trails on a coastal island in
Georgia,” Johnson said, “Meghan has engaged hundreds of students
in the BU community in learning important lessons outside the classroom
walls.”
14
May 2003
Boston University
Office of University Relations