Graduates of the Class of 2020,

It is my privilege to address you as we recognize and celebrate your graduation from Laney College. 

While not in a traditional format given our need to stay-in-place to protect each other, our loved ones, and the broader community, I hope you know that the entire Laney College community—our faculty, staff, and your fellow students—are delighted by your success and rooting you on to your next great endeavor.  Don't believe me? Check out the outpouring of LANEY LOVE HERE!

As we embarked on a new decade, most of us couldn’t have foreseen the challenges of a global pandemic, stay-in-place orders, new modes of learning, and the need to juggle not only being learners, but teachers to our children and support providers to our loved ones.

I know there will be months of analyzing timelines, decrying decisions, and grappling with how we best find our way out of this crisis that has frayed the fabric of our institutions and our communities in terms the way we work, play and commune with each other. But, I have no doubt in my mind that we have the incredible capacity to not only survive, but eventually thrive—and I look no further than you, graduates of the class of 2020—as my evidence.  

Despite every challenge and the moving goal posts, you persevered and continued to ensure that the story of you and your educational journey would be the triumph in the madness. It is the recognition of your grit, determination and incredible intelligence. The story you will tell your children, or your children’s, children’s children will no longer be the one my grandparents told me about walking back and forth to school each day barefoot, up a hill and in two feet of snow…but it will be the story of the power you had to adapt, to pivot, and to be brave in the face of a global health crisis and stay committed to your academic and personal goals. When we talk about resiliency, innovation, and the true spirit of this moment in time, yours and that of our amazing faculty and staff, will be the story I’ll tell.

My hope for you and for our global community is that this crisis has shown us not only our resiliency, but our interconnectedness across cities, towns, and countries and that it connects us more deeply to an ethic of generosity of spirit where we are kinder to each other and give each other a bit more grace.

I see the opportunity for a more compassionate global community that now understands that the fire spreads from home to another home very quickly. And the quicker we work together to put it out, it doesn’t spread and move to someone else.  

Here in Oakland, I’ve seen more acts of kindness and the recognition that our pain is shared. And I look no further than you again, Class of 2020, for the ways in which you’ve recognized our need to pivot instruction and services to remote modalities, but remained supportive and patient as you’ve worked with us together. 

Graduates, today we celebrate your tremendous accomplishment of completing your degrees and certificates. We will confer upon you the rights and privileges of a college graduate and certify that you have demonstrated the depth and breadth of knowledge in your major and of the wider world. I am confident that you have been prepared to deal with the complexity, diversity and change in our local and global communities through your critical thinking and the integration of all you’ve learned. And I hope you will continue to be the system-changers, the advocates, the innovators, the HOPE we have for decades to come. Stand tall today—and everyday—because you have shown the intelligence, determination, and grit that will serve you in any endeavor you undertake, or any challenge set before you.

In Community,

Dr. Tammeil Y. Gilkerson