Delegate Bob Brink,  Remarks at Graduate Convocation – College of Humanities and Social Sciences – George Mason University, May 19, 2011

President Merten, Dean Censer, members of the Faculty, and – especially – distinguished graduates:

I want to tell you how honored I am to have the opportunity to address you and your families.  Honored, and somewhat surprised.   To tell the truth, I thought I had more of a chance to be a finalist on “Dancing with the Stars” than to find myself dressed in cap and gown, standing before an audience celebrating academic achievement. That’s because, to be blunt, my own academic career was a disaster.

As an undergraduate, I attended a small Midwestern four-year liberal arts college, which I proceeded to turn into a five-year liberal arts college. For most of those five years, if I had been forced to declare a major, I would have said either “Poker Playing” or “Watching Roadrunner Cartoons.” I was a slacker before slackers were cool.

I’m certain you’re all familiar with what psychologists call the “Recurring Final Exam Dream.” In this dream, it’s the day of final exams, you’ve either forgotten you enrolled in the course or stopped going to class altogether, and so you show up for the final completely unprepared. People keep experiencing this dream for years and years after they’ve left school. Does any of that ring a bell?  Ladies and gentlemen, I’m here today to tell you: I Have Lived the Dream.

The year was 1967. The course, as I recall, was “Chaucer and His Contemporaries.” It met at 8 o’clock in the morning, in the middle of a frigid Midwestern winter, on the far side of campus. My next class wasn’t until 11 o’clock. Chaucer never had a chance. I made it to class for a total of three days before the temptation of a comfortable bed on a cold morning overcame the allure of listening to the “Canterbury Tales,” rendered in an undecipherable mixture of Middle English dialect and Midwestern twang.

Well, before I knew it, finals week was upon us, and, since I needed the credit to graduate, I decided it would be a good idea to show up for the final exam. So I rousted myself out of bed on the morning of finals and trudged across campus, only to find a deserted and darkened classroom.

Did I have the wrong day? Was this a cruel joke? My confusion was cleared up a few minutes later when the professor came down the hall and kindly explained to me that, due to a heating malfunction, the class had relocated to another room in the building – six weeks earlier.

Empty classroom, all the lights out: That’s a pretty good metaphor for my academic career.

Over the past several years, I’ve spent quite a bit of time on the Board of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.  The Foundation’s mission statement sums up its purpose and the scope of its activities:  to support “research, education, and programs in the humanities to assist individuals and communities to understand the past and its influence, to question and resolve issues in the present, and to shape a future committed to the common good.”

Possibly my work on behalf of the Foundation is the equivalent of a criminal’s community service — a way of making amends to the academic world for my misspent youth. But beyond doing penance, my experience with the Foundation has enriched me in many ways and has provided invaluable perspective on the state whose citizens I serve as a member of the Virginia General Assembly.

And there is much to learn about Virginia. In all respects it is an incredibly diverse place. Geographically, it stretches from the Atlantic Ocean hundreds of miles to its westernmost tip, which is further west than Detroit Michigan.

As you cross Virginia, you experience the Commonwealth’s rich cultural heritage, from the communities of Virginia Indians dating back thousands of years, to the first European settlement at Jamestown, to centuries-old traditions of folk art and music that still thrive in small towns and rural hamlets.

In this sesquicentennial year of the beginning of the Civil War, the Capitol of the Confederacy in Richmond and the spot where Lee surrendered at Appomattox are reminders of Virginia’s centrality in that conflict. Just a few miles from Appomattox, the Moton Museum in Farmville tells the shameful story of Prince Edward County’s decision to close its public schools rather than integrate them following Brown v. Board of Education.

Economically and culturally, our area of Virginia and the rest of the state are like two different worlds. It’s as if somewhere around the Rappahannock River, there’s an invisible wall that separates NOVA – Northern Virginia — from ROVA – the Rest of Virginia.

The strong, vibrant economy that we enjoy here in Northern Virginia contrasts starkly with the chronically depressed conditions of southside and southwest Virginia. And while ROVA often seems chained to tradition, with its feet planted firmly in the 19^th Century and its gaze focused squarely on the 18th, in NOVA we’ve become a destination of opportunity for people from every continent. The students at the elementary school that my children attended in Arlington speak over 75 languages at home. Northern Virginia is the real-life face of 21^st Century globalization.

So Virginia is a place of contrast and change. Virginia was founded as an agrarian settlement on the banks of the James, but we’re on the cutting edge of the 21^st century’s knowledge economy. We denied some of our citizens the fundamental right to a public education rather than comply with the law of the land, And yet Virginia was also the first state in the nation to elect an African-American as governor.

To find common ground in the midst of all this diversity, to be able to understand the past and use it as a platform on which to build the future, is a difficult task in an increasingly impersonal and isolating world. In Virginia, it’s especially important for us to make the effort.

As any of the American History majors out there can tell you, Virginia isn’t a state – it is a commonwealth. While there may be little legal distinction between the two terms, to Virginians our designation as a “commonwealth” places on us the responsibility to seek community and consensus, to find those values we share, to work toward common goals.

That’s where all of you come in. There is one unifying theme to the varied disciplines represented in the college of humanities and social sciences. They help us to better understand how we as humans relate to each other:

From criminology and the law, which sets the parameters of an ordered society; to linguistics, which shows us how language shapes our world view; to history, which provides guideposts to the future by illuminating the past – your education has been an exploration of the human condition –  where we’ve come from, where we are, and where we’re going.

Just as my service with the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities has opened doors of understanding and appreciation for me, the education whose milestone you celebrate tonight gives you the opportunity to understand and appreciate the contrasts and diversity of a changing commonwealth, nation, and world. I hope the future will offer you the chance to take advantage of that opportunity.

So take it from this failed liberal arts major who found redemption in the humanities: George Mason University and the college of humanities and social sciences have given you the tools “to understand the past and its influence, to question and resolve issues in the present, and to shape a future committed to the common good.” I ask that you use the skills you’ve acquired to engage in the world around you.

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