UVA leader urges graduates to create their own blueprint

[Kenyon Bonner speaking]

Thank you, Mr. Rector.

Esteemed members of the Board of Visitors and platform party, Mr. President, faculty and staff, dear friends and families of the graduates and you – members of the Class of 2026.

What’s up!

So, when I was in middle school, I would introduce myself and carefully spell my last name: B-O-N-N-E-R and then I would quickly make it clear – it’s the short “o.”

Now back then, I know some of y’all were out late last night. Back then, that was less about phonetics and more about survival back in those days. My wife, Sylvana, is even more particular about the pronunciation of our last name. She uses her maiden name as her middle name. Her maiden name is – Bulgin.

So yes, pronunciation matters a lot in our household. Some of you will get that on the way home.

Now, since the University announced I’d be speaking today, reactions have been mixed.

Many people have congratulated me. A few offered their condolences. Some said they were really excited to hear Jim Ryan speak.

One person asked me: “Who do you think declined before they asked you to speak?” Facts.

Someone on social media said, “WTH is Kenyon Bonner?”

Honestly, fair question.

While I may not be a household name. I’m just a guy from the east side of Cleveland, Ohio.

Home of the Browns and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Heights High, born and raised.

As a kid,basketball plays and pickup games left me amazed.

I’m first-generation and limited In.

And appreciate a good run like with Forrest – and Jim.

I don’t drink alcohol – Han Solo.

So – no red cups – like black-and-white photos.

Still aspire to be No. 1 – like Gretchen Walsh and Bodo’s.

I moved from PA to VA, passed alleys, and caught – oops.

I’m outside on the Corner – like Coupes.

And drop bars like coach Bennett did hoops.

Principled – he’s a man of conviction – with the courage to begin new stints.

See I came to UVA two years ago, after 20 years and deep sentiments.

However, today I’m here to talk to you about blueprints.

I appreciate that.

Blueprints. Thomas Jefferson had blueprints. Not only of buildings, but of ideas. Of ideals. Many flawed. Some enduring.

A blueprint for a nation. A Declaration of Independence – and moral imperative on human rights.

A nation that dared to assert the proposition that all men are created equal. The blueprint of a public university based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind.

Today, we stand on these hallowed Grounds of the Academical Village – another of Jefferson’s blueprints – where generations of students have lived within an imperfect, yet evolving system of self-governance and honor.

And yet, these Grounds tell a fuller story.

We sit today, betwixt pavilions of living and learning constructed on the ancestral lands of the Monacan people. Each red brick – serpentine wall, colonnade and portico – laid by the hands of free and enslaved laborers.

The Memorial to Enslaved Laborers. A maelstrom of emotions – to the east of the Rotunda, one of higher education’s most iconic symbols.

Graduates, you symbolize the possibilities of Jefferson’s blueprint, even if he did not envision you as a probability.

However, I believe there is such a thing as a divine blueprint – beyond any one mind – one that exceeds the limits that Jefferson himself could not overcome.

For all his brilliance, his unfounded and ethically corrosive claims about human capacity reflected his ignorance and his hubris.

History teaches us that ignorance precedes injustice.

Or, as Nasir Jones puts it: “People fear what they don’t understand. Hate what they can’t conquer. Guess it’s just a theory of man.”

However, in all of Jefferson’s contradictions and complexity, his blueprint for an educated democracy was compelling, transcendent and transformational.

And here you are. The children of generations of your families. You are destiny manifested. Your journeys and lives are more than Instagram and TikTok reels or likes. Your lives are significant – they carry weight – substantive and substantial.

Whether you were born and raised in Virginia, an international or domestic student, you have risen – albeit on the shoulders of others – like a phoenix from the flames of the trials and tribulations of life and earned your way here to this momentous occasion.

Your commonality today, at least as it relates to the University of Virginia, is that you are the inevitability of someone else’s blueprint.

Graduates, my question for you is simple: What is your life’s blueprint?

In 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke to a group of junior high school students in Philadelphia. Just six months before he was assassinated, he asked them the same question.

For Dr. King, a brilliant and complicated man, one’s blueprint included three essential elements.

First, a deep belief in your own dignity, worth and what he called, your “somebodiness.” To King, somebodiness is a strong conviction that you matter. That you have worth, and that your life has significance.

Second, an unwavering commitment to the eternal principles of beauty, justice and love.

And third, King said, within your blueprint, you should possess a determination to achieve excellence in your endeavors by setting your mind, body and soul to pursue them with full conviction.

His audience?

Teenagers transitioning into a new phase of their young lives. About to meet new people and acclimate to new environments. All the while reconciling who they believe they are and who they aspire to become.

If this feels familiar, stay with me.

Now, if you are drafting a blueprint for your life, I believe you need to include resilience, a sense of duty and hope.

Why resilience?

A blueprint must be durable and at the same time flexible.

It can be built over time. Not as invulnerability, but as capacity. Resilience is not the absence of fear or the avoidance of pain. It is the ability to move through them.

Your perseverance – through failure, loss and doubt, including your own – will determine whether you endure.

The world beyond these Grounds can be unforgiving. As many of you already know. Some of you will enter new spaces where you may feel like you don’t belong. Some of you will be told you don’t belong.

When I began college, I struggled with what we now call “imposter syndrome.” At the time, I did not believe that I was so-called “college material.”

And for too long, no one on my campus told me otherwise.

Many of you have moved beyond feeling like an imposter at UVA. But the imposter – with its cunning and convincing voice – may return when you start a new job, enter graduate or professional school or move into unfamiliar communities.

Let me be clear with my advice.

Do not give that voice oxygen. Do not give it time. Do not give it space.

Wherever you choose to be, let no one convince you – not even yourself – that you do not belong.

Resilience will also prepare you for unpredictability and the certainty that life is fragile.

I encourage you to hold onto your moments of happiness, especially the ones that take your breath away.

A contagious smile. A comforting hug. Poetic words that land exactly where they should. A warm and sunny Thursday afternoon on the Lawn. Upsetting a ranked ACC opponent in a double overtime football game at Scott Stadium. Today.

Cherish the unbridled elation and ethereal feeling of being overwhelmed by immense emotion – joy.

These moments are precious. Pursue them with unrelenting determination. When you find them, embrace them for as long as you can. Happiness can be elusive.

When you least expect it, you will be reminded.

Five years ago, during the pandemic, I lost my father.I had not seen my father in person for over a year. My mother called me on a cold and early January morning.

Cardiac arrest. That was it. He was gone. I was broken.

I miss my father’s phone calls, just to say: “Hey son, I’m proud of you, man.”

I will never receive that call again. Not in this lifetime.

Many of us carry loss. Our community at UVA is too familiar with loss.

Almost four years ago, the beautiful and promising lives of Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis Jr. and D’Sean Perry were taken. This community uplifted and carried one another when grief made it difficult to stand alone.

Nothing fully prepares you for loss. But when it comes – and it will – do not suffer in silence. Ask for help, lean on others – offer help.

Resilience is the discernment to know when to allow others to help you carry the weight.

As Lena Horne once observed, “It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it.”

What kind of people do we need in our world?

We need people who are kind, compassionate and principled. People who integrate their reason and their passion. People committed to making a positive impact on other people’s lives.

People with intellectual humility who, despite their strong viewpoints, recognize that their beliefs and opinions just might be wrong.

People who have the courage to speak out against injustice.People with the moral clarity to make decisions with a sense of duty.

The philosopher Immanuel Kant posited that moral worth is found only in actions done from duty.

According to him, duty is doing what is right, not because it benefits you, not because it is pleasing, but because it is what you ought to do.

Our world is not black and white or a series of binary choices. That would just simply be too easy. Dilemmas are often a hot mess of gray with no perfect answers.

Kant’s rigid approach to duty may be too restrictive for the nuance of life as we know it.

However, if you have a sense of duty when you need to make complex decisions in your life that affect people, you might contemplate the answers to questions like:

What is the honest thing to do?What is the humane thing to do? What responsibility do I carry to other people?

Now I believe you all already possess this discernment as UVA graduates.

And despite the, the exhibitionist tendencies of some of you, I love on the Lawn.

You are more informed. More self-aware. And you have agency.

Many of you will hold positions of power and influence – formally or informally.

And you will continue to face moments in your life and your personal and professional lives when doing what is right is not what’s easiest, safest or most rewarding.

But always remember your character will not be measured by whether you possess knowledge and power or privilege, but how you choose to use it.

And finally, your blueprint will need to be illuminated by hope. Our world offers many reasons to be hopeful.

The sound of a baby laughing. The sight of children playing, unburdened by the stresses of adulthood. The scent of magnolia blooming or freshly baked chocolate chip cookies.

Your faith.

Witnessing first responders running toward danger.

Cancer in remission.

And yes, even Max escaping the Upside Down to the sound of “Running Up That Hill” in “Stranger Things.”

But I want to be honest with you.

Doing your duty – consistently and faithfully – can be exhausting. And when you’re exhausted, hope can feel distant or even foolish. Like a self-inflicted wound.

Optimism feels like a fake smile, hiding the tears of a clown.

I know that feeling.

There were moments in my life when I poured everything I had into students, into institutions, into people, and walked away wondering if any of it mattered.

Those moments will come for you as well.

But here’s what I have learned: Hope is not the belief that everything will be easy. It will not.

Hope is the decision to keep going despite the uneasiness.

And, in the moments of my life where I’ve questioned my own resolve, it was students – like you – who reminded me why I find joy in my work.

Those priceless moments when a student writes and sends me a note just simply to say “thank you.” Each note – heartfelt and full of gratitude – about how something I did or possibly said helped change their perspective on life, helped them to keep going when they wanted to quit or made them hopeful.

After 30 years, I’ve collected hundreds of these notes, or as I like to call them, my paychecks.

Mr. President I still need a paycheck.

Now students, you uplift me and my colleagues – faculty and staff – we come here every day to serve a bigger purpose, bigger than any one of us, all of us put together.

But seeing each of you reminds us of why hope still matters.

Let’s hope graduates be both your compass and your anchor, guiding you forward and holding you steady in times of despair.

Nelson Mandela observed: “Our human compassion binds us one to the other – not in pity or patronizingly – but as human beings who have learned how to turn our common suffering into hope for the future.”

I hope your time at UVA has strengthened your belief in what is possible.

You are leaving UVA better than you found it. And as you continue along your journey in life and ascend to great heights in all of your endeavors, please do not forget to reach back and lift others as you climb.

May your spirits be in accord with your voices – and most importantly, your actions.

Graduates, consider what is in your life’s blueprint.

Take care of your business. Take care of one another. And most importantly, take care of yourself.

I am proud of each and every one of you.

Congratulations and Wahoowa!