Mau Tells Grads “Design Your World for the Welfare of all of Life”

At the opening of the ceremony, President Steven Tepper acknowledged the loss of Rasikh Shaukat ’25, who tragically passed away the week before graduation. “Even as we gather to celebrate this moment of achievement, we bear witness to the terrible grief we feel for the loss of your classmate. We can and should hold these two truths simultaneously: grief and celebration. And even though Rasikh is not with us this morning, he is very much in our thoughts.”

Tepper said to honor Rasikh’s memory, a chair was set aside to symbolize his presence, and he asked the assembly to pause for a moment of silence to remember the student and his family. “They are forever a part of this class and this community,” Tepper said. 

Other commencement speakers included Delbert “Del” Gonzales ’25, recipient of the James Soper Merrill Prize awarded to the member of the graduating class “who, in character and influence, has typified the highest ideals of the College” as selected by the faculty, and class speaker Alexandra “Allie” Ennis ’25, who was chosen by her peers.

Claire Williams, a geosciences major from LaGrange Highlands, Ill., was the Class of 2025 valedictorian, and Katherine Withers, a sociology major from Arlington, Va., was salutatorian.

Mau was awarded an honorary degree, along with Ray Halbritter, Oneida Indian Nation representative and Turning Stone Enterprises chief executive officer. Halbritter addressed the graduating class at the baccalaureate ceremony on May 24.

Watch Ceremony

Bruce Mau

Bruce Mau used his own experience and knowledge as a designer to inspire the Class of 2025 to lead and show others the potential of the future.

He spoke about growing up on a farm in a mining town in northern Canada and discovering a love for art in high school. He went to college to pursue that dream, but said he failed. “I lasted only a year-and a-half. I just couldn’t fit into their way of being. So, for most of my life I thought that I failed college … because they told me that.” But, Mau added, “recently I realized that I hadn’t failed. I did what college was supposed to do, I just did it quickly.”

Mau said he learned a new language — graphic arts — and got a job he had fallen in love with, becoming a designer. “When I became a designer, without realizing, I set out on a lifelong adventure of learning.”

He told the graduates that “you too are designers, or you wouldn’t be here. You have a future in mind. You have intention.”

Mau said he had spent time with some Hamilton students to prepare for his speech, and called them thoughtful, ambitious, compassionate, and profoundly optimistic. “They shared their deep gratitude for their experience here, but also their concern about the world outside what they called, ‘the Bubble’ here at Hamilton,” he recalled.

“They were fully aware that they are graduating from this utopian ideal into one of the most volatile and challenging environments that has ever existed. And they were excited by that,” he observed. “They were fully charged to lean into the potential that they have developed here and look forward to the tests that will come as the world transforms around them. I was deeply inspired. I want to thank them for restoring my faith in humanity,” Mau said.

He advised the Class of 2025 that while the world may need them, they will also need the world. “… You will need the collective potential of all of us … the social connections that give meaning to life. You need the radical possibilities for purpose and impact in the complex, urgent and sometimes dire opportunities that you will be called to address,” he said.

Mau urged the graduates to think of them not as challenges, but “entrepreneurial opportunities.” He told those gathered, “You will live through a scale of change that has never happened in human history. Your ability to design — to think critically, to see potential, to connect the dots that others can’t, to communicate with nuance and compassion, to inspire — all the skills of a Hamilton education — will be critically important in the global transformation that you will guide and lead.”

Mau concluded, “In its broadest sense, design is leadership. With what you have experienced here at Hamilton, you have the power to show people a future more exciting than their past and inspire them to work together on the journey to a new world.”

Remarks by Bruce Mau

Delbert “Del” Gonzales ’25

Soper Merrill prize winner Del Gonzales spoke about the community he has found at Hamilton. “When I got here, I was convinced I had somehow tricked admissions. … I couldn’t believe that I belonged,” he said. “To make myself believe I belonged, I threw myself into everything … And I know I wasn’t alone.”

But, Gonzales explained, “Somewhere along the way, the need to prove myself and the disbelief shifted into a sense of belonging. And that’s because of this community. Although we all have different majors and interests and have been on different sports teams and clubs, I think we can all say we are each graduating with a major in ‘community.’”

He said an instructor defined it as communal effervescence. “It’s this shared feeling of energy and excitement when people come together for the same purpose or event,” Gonzales suggested.

He cited examples. “... It’s in the small things. It’s a professor pulling you aside after class just to say ‘you’ve got something.’ It’s a friend texting ‘you were amazing’ after your show,” he said. “We talk a lot about Hamilton’s resources, but the real resource isn’t that $1 billion dollar endowment. It’s the people — the friends, mentors, staff, and family.”

“And if you’re ever in doubt, like I was, if you ever forget that you do belong, I hope you hear the voices of the people who believed in you here, and I hope you carry those voices forward. Because out in the world, it will matter that we uplift each other, that we stay connected. That we don’t just believe in ourselves, but keep believing in each other,” Gonzales concluded.

Read Del’s Remarks

Alexandra “Allie” Ennis ’25

For Allie Ennis, Hamilton has been about how people show up for each other. She recalled her first campus visit when she and her family were pleasantly surprised by the number of people who held doors open for them. “There was a pervasive, intentional kindness,” she explained. Ennis recalled that kindness when earlier this year she was asked by someone new on campus: “‘What makes Hamilton so special?’ ‘What makes Hamilton, Hamilton?’ This is a place where people hold doors for one another — literally and metaphorically,” she explained.

“It may seem like a small thing, but what are you saying when you hold a door for someone? ‘I see you, you go first, come with me.’ And those are not such small things. I also came to Hamilton thinking I was done with math because I wasn’t particularly good at it,” Ennis said. “Until freshman year Calculus when Professor Cockburn pulled me into her office and said ‘You should stick with this!’ She opened a door because she saw me in a way I hadn’t seen myself. Now, I’m graduating as a math major and have had some of my most meaningful experiences tutoring math at our QSR Center.

“In small moments and big, the Class of 2025 has held the door open for one another, and we’ve been brave enough to run through it.”

“We showed up for each other — in every thesis presentation, every concert at Wellin Hall, every handshake line after an IM basketball game,” Ennis said. “In small moments and big, the Class of 2025 has held the door open for one another, and we’ve been brave enough to run through it. Our class came to Hamilton in the wake of extended isolation. We do not take community for granted.

“Today, as we leave the Hill and enter the exciting, messy world that waits for us, let’s remember to hold the door open because that is who we are.”

Read Alexandra’s Remarks