Ten thousand voices sing thy acclaim; Ten thousand hearts beat high at thy name;
All unafraid and girded with good, Mother of men a queen thou hast stood;
Children of thine a true brotherhood, Virginia, Hail, All Hail!
Good evening.
I’m Allen Groves, Dean of Students for all schools of the University, and I get to be
the first person to say to you “Welcome to Hooville,” otherwise known as UVA.
Now, we traditionally hold this Opening Convocation on the Lawn, but as you are all-too-aware,
COVID-19 has upended many of our traditions and plans.
But this doesn’t alter in any way the fact that you are starting what I hope will be
one of the most memorable journeys in your life.
So whether you are joining us as a new First Year undergraduate, as a 1L in the Law School
an undergraduate or graduate transfer student into the university , or just starting your graduate
or professional education in one of our 12 schools, I want to say welcome to the University
of Virginia.
You are now part of a very special community and, in a few years, you will join one of the
most fervently loyal alumni networks in the country
when you walk down this Lawn and take your degree and I promise you, you will get to walk down this
Lawn.
While it’s true this fall that you may not get to play Rugby in Mad Bowl, or enter Old Cabell Hall for an a cappella concert packed with your friends
or sway with 100 other students singing the Good Old Song,
or huff & puff your way up Humpback Rock with 25 of your
closest friends – this will still be a memorable time in your life, with lots of opportunity
to bond with friends and enrich your mind.
And we will overcome the current COVID-19 challenge and be right back doing all these
things we love.
I’m so very happy to have you joining us this fall.
In a few minutes, you will hear brief remarks from 4 key student leaders at the University:
Ellen Yates, President of UVA Student Council
Tre Tennyson, President of the Graduate & Professional Student Council
Ryan Keane, Chair of the Honor Committee
Gabby Cox, Chair of the University Judiciary Committee
But first, I’d like to turn the podium over to Jim Ryan, the 9th President of the University
of Virginia, to offer his personal words of welcome to you as you begin this new journey
as Wahoos.
President Ryan is beginning his third year leading UVA, after a long stint as a distinguished
professor in UVA’s School of Law followed by five years as Dean of the Harvard University
Graduate School of Education.
He’s also the author of two best-selling books.
President Ryan has challenged us to be a University that is both “great” and “good” – meaning
we should pursue excellence in all that we do – be it research, teaching, athletics
or the arts – while always striving to do so in a manner that is ethical and good and
right by the community we serve.
Only in this way may be achieve our public mission and our objective to graduate true
Citizen Leaders.
President Ryan.
Thanks to Dean Groves for that introduction, and thanks to all of you for watching.
As you’ve heard, my name is Jim Ryan.
I am the president of the University of Virginia, and on behalf of the entire community here,
I would like to welcome you—the Class of 2024—to one of the finest universities in
the world.
This not an ordinary convocation, as this is not going to an ordinary year.
But you know that already.
You’ve already to finish school online, attended virtual graduation, missed proms
and other events, and you likely spent much of this summer at home.
For all of that you have missed and given up, I’m sorry.
I wish I could say it’s all over and we’re back to normal, but you also know that’s
not the case.
This year at UVA is undoubtedly going to be different than any we’ve seen in our lifetimes,
regardless of whether you are on Grounds or online.
There will be some challenges, for sure, but there will be some advantages as well.
One immediate advantage is that my speech this year will be much shorter than it would
be if we were
together on the Lawn, which should reduce your suffering considerably.
So let me get right to it and make one quick point and offer one small piece of advice.
The point is simple and obvious but worth emphasizing: You belong here.
I don’t mean by this that you need to be here physically, I mean you all belong as
members of this community--you deserve to be a part of this community.
I say this as someone who was a first-generation student, as more than one in ten of you are
now, but it is a message for all of you.
College will open doors for you and change your life in ways you probably cannot even
imagine at this point, and you will look back on your time here, I am confident, as four
of the best and most important years of your life.
But you may not feel that way now, as it’s only natural when you join a new place to
feel slightly uneasy, and that’s equally if not more true if you are joining a new
community virtually.
I attended a small non-descript school in New Haven, and I still remember when I arrived
on campus my freshman year.
It was like landing on a new planet—one where I didn’t know the language and customs
or fit in very well.
It took a while to feel comfortable, but it eventually felt like home, and became a place
I fell in love with and love to this day.
My deepest hope is that you will have a similar experience.
You are entering an incredibly caring community.
The faculty, staff, and your fellow students will care not only about how you do in the
classroom, but how you do outside of the classroom as well.
So please understand this: you belong here.
It doesn’t matter where you are from, the color of your hair or the color of your skin,
your gender, your sexual orientation, your religion—whoever you are and wherever you
are from, you belong.
People are fond of saying this is Mr. Jefferson’s university, but know that as of this day it
is also, very much, your university.
Ok, so I have also one small piece of advice, which I hope is memorable.
It’s this: When in doubt, build a bridge.
When in doubt, build a bridge.
I don’t mean literally, except maybe if you are in the architecture or engineering
schools.
I mean make a connection and engage.
To be specific, I encourage you to make an effort to reach out and get to know someone
who comes from a different background, or who took a different road to get here.
This is a remarkably diverse community, but even amidst this diversity, it’s easy to
stick with the familiar.
I promise you will have a richer experience here if you build bridges across lines of
apparent difference.
As you engage with your peers, I especially encourage you to engage with people or ideas
you may disagree with, perhaps quite strongly.
This is one of the best ways to sharpen your own thinking and, sometimes, to even change
your mind, both of which are part of learning and growing.
And I encourage you
along the way to practice the art of generous listening—to do your best to understand
a view, and the rationale behind it, before deciding whether you agree or disagree.
I would also encourage you to reach out to faculty and make an effort to get to know
them.
They are a remarkable group of people who are passionate about their research and about
teaching.
UVA has a well-earned reputation as a place where faculty genuinely care about their students
and about teaching.
So engage while you are in class, and go to office hours if and when you can whether virtual
or live.
Build a bridge to the faculty.
I promise it will make UVA feel more like home.
And while you are at it, look for a chance to build a bridge to the broader Charlottesville
community.
This is a wonderful place, but like other small cities, it has its challenges and a
complicated history.
I encourage you to learn about and engage with this broader community.
There are countless ways to do so, including through the amazing programs at Madison House.
UVA is your immediate home, but UVA sits within a larger community, and if you get involved
in that community, I predict you will gain as much as you give.
These are just three examples.
There are other ways to build a bridge that will become apparent to you over time.
It may involve building bridges across disciplines as you pursue your studies, partnering with
other students to complete a project for class, or building a bridge to a foreign culture
if you study abroad.
My goal here is not to exhaust all the possibilities.
Instead, I would like to get one simple idea stuck in your head,
so that it pops up when you need it: When in doubt, build a bridge.
Now, I realize some of you are probably thinking, how am I supposed to build bridges from home,
or if I’m wearing a mask and standing six feet apart?
As with all things related to the pandemic, it will be more challenging and will require
more creativity, and some bridges may have to wait until you are all here in person and
we are back to normal.
But you can absolutely begin now, no matter where you are.
And in fact, with the pandemic making everyone feel a little bit more isolated, it’s going
to be more important than ever to reach out and create new connections.
I can’t tell you exactly what those bridges will look like, or how exactly you should
build them, whether in person or online.
That is for you to decide.
I can only tell you that the effort will be worth it.
You’ll discover remarkable things on the other side—friendships you might not have
had, knowledge you might never have gained, and perspectives you might never have considered.
Every time you build a bridge to somewhere or someone, and you make a connection, I promise
you’ll be happier for the effort, and our community will be stronger for it as well.
III.
Conclusion
a.
So welcome to the UVA community and the UVA family.
I can’t predict what this semester will bring.
No one can.
But I have faith that, while things will certainly be different, the next few months will also
offer opportunities to connect with some amazing people, broaden your own horizons, and make
this community stronger—no matter where you happen to be.
All we ask in return is that you engage, act responsibly, and treat others—whether faculty,
students, staff, or members of the community—with kindness and respect.
The next time we all get together as a group.
hopefully in person, will be four years from now, on the Lawn for graduation.
All of you—all of us—will be different people then, shaped by the choices we make
over the next few months and the next few years.
I hope you choose to build bridges.
Thank you and good luck.
Hello Class of 2024, and our wonderful transfer students.
My name is Ellen Yates, and I am the President of Student Council.
I’m so excited to welcome you all to UVA and to our community
-- we are so glad you’re here, even in the midst of these uncertain times.
How many times in the last several months have you heard that word,
“uncertain?”
Perhaps too many times to count.
I know that for most of you, the uncertainty
of our moment is unwelcome, especially because under normal circumstances, there are usually
parts of the “college experience” that we can
expect with certainty -- football games, nights out with friends, packed events on the Lawn.
Uncertainty, however, is actually what has made my own path through UVA the meaningful
and rich experience it has been.
It was my lack of certainty about what my academic path would look
like that led to the discovery of my interests in religion, politics, and human rights.
It was my lack of certainty about where I would find
my home at UVA that led me to explore my passion for leadership and community building in different
organizations, forming close friendships along the way.
And ultimately, it was my lack of certainty about how our community could be
made better that pushed me to seek out opportunities for change-making.
To me, this is what the true college experience is: taking the unknown
and unpredictable and making it your own.
As an organization, Student Council is also trying to lean into this uncertainty.
We have been working hard this summer to ensure that the
needs and concerns of our community are heard by
administration, and that the most equitable and effective policies are enacted.
However, student self-governance, a phrase you will hear frequently
in your time at UVA, is fundamentally about your ability as students to act as individual
agents of change.
Student Council’s role is to help equip students as best as we can to be these
instruments of change in whatever endeavor they
choose, whether it be by helping connect students to important resources, serving as a bridge
between students and administration, or amplifying the work and voices of students and their
organizations.
How you engage with those resources, and how you use your voice in your time
here, is up to you, but know that we are here to support you, to listen to you, and to stand
alongside you.
This year may indeed be an uncertain one, but I want to impress upon you that you will
never be alone in this unpredictability.
You are joining a community of people with a wide variety of
passions and a fierce love of their school and the students who comprise it.
There is little you cannot find at UVA, if you’re looking with
an open mind.
No doubt, with this community comes a significant burden of responsibility.
The responsibility to look out for one another’s safety, to
hold each other accountable, and to prioritize each other's wellbeing.
We have important obligations to each other that we must not
abandon, during this time of uncertainty more than
ever.
So do not be afraid of uncertainty.
See it for what it is, the good and the bad, but know that, no
matter where you’re living or learning, there is always one thing you can be certain
of: each of you are deserving, are loved and are welcome
members of this community, and we are so excited to have you here.
I wish you the best of luck in the coming year, and know that we have your
back no matter what happens.
We’re all rooting for you, every step of the way.
Thank you.
Hi, my name is Tre Tennyson, and I’m the Chair of the Graduate and Professional Council,
and welcome to UVA.
The Graduate and Professional Council is the representative body tasked with advocating
on behalf of the University’s graduate and professional students.
Like so many of you, I am excited and nervous about what this next year may mean.
We stand collectively at a moment that demands adherence to our highest ideals, and yet so
much has already been required of us.
We felt the loneliness of being separated from friends and loved ones and the fear of
looking out at an unfamiliar world.
We felt, and still feel, the desperate hope that life can resume and our troubles can
finally be behind us.
These and so many other challenges are what we will carry with us going forward.
But what excites me now is how we plan to put this hard-won wisdom to use.
Together, imagine the things we can create, the programs we can put into place, and the
supports we can build.
As we make sense of a world we’ve inherited and then been told to change, I know we can
rise to the occasion.
I’ve been where you are twice.
I was an undergraduate at UVA, Class of 2010, and am now a second year at UVA’s Darden
Graduate School of Business.
So on two separate occasions I looked at this University and all the possibilities held
within and wondered where I would fit.
Who would I meet?
And at what point would this place begin to feel like home? …or home again.
And the
answers came…not from imagining myself as separate from the University, or where it
was going, or what it could be…but by diving in, getting active and involved, finding the
friends that I would grow with and love not only for two years or four years but for a
lifetime, as we pushed, supported, challenged each other, and made space for each other’s
peace and frailty.
For being a student at UVA is, at its heart, about striving to be fully human, and cultivating
those key relationships and experiences that advance your community and reveal to you,
at all times, who you are.
You are now entering a very special place at a very special time, and I am excited to
see how you will uplift, transform, and grant us the benefit of your wisdom and good nature.
So welcome to UVA.
Our community is stronger, wiser, and more complete now that you are here.
Thank you.
Good evening everyone and welcome to the University of Virginia.
I wish you were all here in Charlottesville with me, but while
we may be apart physically, I am so excited to
welcome you all into our community.
My name is Ryan Keane and I am a rising fourth year in the Batten School of Leadership and
Public Policy and I'm serving as the Chair of the Honor Committee for the upcoming year.
The reality is, we are in a crisis, but with crisis comes opportunity.
Of course you already know that, and while we grapple with
the question of how our time at UVA will be different this semester, it begs the question
of how Honor looks in this COVID world?
And the easy answer is, it looks the same.
You see, all of this is a test: a test of student self-governance and wether or not
we can uphold the values of Honor.
And I firmly believe we can pass that test, but
it takes work.
And with that, I’m going to say something you may not want to hear, but needs to be
said.
The next 4 years won’t be easy.
You’ve worked so hard to get here and not to
take away from any of that, but during your time here at UVA you will be pushed to
your limits in ways you never have before.
And when you are pushed to those limits, it will be easy, so easy, to feel like you don’t
belong, to feel that this isn’t the place for
you.
And I know that because I’ve been there.
My second year here I worked at Crossroads, a dining hall of sorts that you
unfortunately, or fortunately, are not getting to eat at right now.
And I would work the evening shift, from 5:30 in the afternoon
until 2:30 in the morning.
And it was hard: my classmates and friends would be coming back
from bars and parties, and there I was, making them a burrito.
And in that moment, I couldn’t help but feel that I was different
from them, that I was on the other side of the glass because I don’t belong.
But the truth is that I, and every single one of you,
was chosen to be here for a reason, and therefore, you belong.
We are all different pieces of the puzzle that makes the UVA community so great.
We all come from different backgrounds and have our
own strengths and weaknesses, likes and dislikes, but Honor brings us together.
This shared accord that we will hold ourselves to a higher standard even in the
face of adversity.
In life we have good times and bad times, ups and downs.
Everything’s great when times are good.
It’s easy to be Honorable when you studied and know all the
answers on a test.
But it’s what you do in the hard times that really matters.
How we respond to the current situation both as
individuals and as a community defines who we are.
As we make our way through this year and you continue your time at UVA, always
ask yourself this: How do you respond when things get hard?
And the answer to that question is what sets us apart as UVA
students.
When times are tough, we don’t falter, we don’t cut corners.
We keep pushing forward and stay true to who we are.
That is what Honor means and that is what makes this community and the bond we
share so great.
Thank you and welcome home.
Hi, my name is Gabby Cox, I am a fourth year in the Batten School of Public Policy and
I am currently the Chair of the UJC.
I know this isn’t necessarily the welcome you pictured when sending in your admittance
acceptance letter, but this is our new reality.
I hope all of you are safe and healthy and welcome
to UVA.
When I was sitting in your position my first year, a student leader said that life is about
making choices, and then capitalizing on opportunities to be happy with that choice.
You all have already chosen to attend the University
of Virginia.
Over the next four years you will have to answer the question “why did I stay here?”
Every one of you will question if you made the
right choice in coming here, but one thing you should never question is your place here.
Student governance is where I found my reason for staying.
I define student governance with three phrases: having a voice, holding each
other to a higher standard, and acknowledging the
past while looking to the future.
Simply put, student governance is holding our members of the
community to a higher standard in order to craft a better future that students wish to
see.
Student governance is a multibranch system, but the
one that stuck out to me my first year was the
University Judiciary Committee, or the UJC for short.
The UJC is a student run organization that adjudicates violations of the University’s
Twelve Standards of Conduct, which can be found
online or on the plaques located in the first-floor lounge of each dorm.
Some examples can include drinking/smoking in dorms to physical
assault, DIP and DUI charges.
This year the UJC is in a unique position where we are now tasked
with adjudicating COVID-19 policy violations which are classified as any act that violates
local, state, federal and/or university guidelines.
Students who are brought before the UJC are tried for the alleged conduct by a jury of
their peers and, if they plead guilty or are found
guilty, are given a sanction.
These sanctions are educational rather than punitive to help students
understand our community’s values and their individual impact at the university.
We don’t operate on precedent, meaning there is no set
outcome for any type of violation and we take into consideration the full range of circumstances
that can define a single incident.
The UJC is a fully student-run body.
In our system, cases are investigated by students, parties are represented
by students, and outcomes are decided by students.
My time on the Committee and at the University of Virginia has been deeply fulfilling.
In my time here students have stood in unity against
neo-nazis and alt right members filled with nothing but hate on August 11th and 12th of
2017.
In the Charlottesville community, just weeks ago, students stood in peaceful demonstration
while black students endured death threats.
In our world minorities have fought too long and
too hard to have their voices heard.
But I encourage all of you who are seeking change to get involved.
Student governance opens a window for organizations like Black Student Alliance,
Latinx SA, the LGTBQ+ community and countless others to demand more from its university
and its leaders.
One purpose of UVA is to promote a “ community bound together by foundational values
of honor, integrity, trust, and respect.
” Class of 2024, use your voice to push for equitable
change in an environment that you are unsatisfied with.
Thank you and best of luck this year.
That Good Old Song of Wahoowa, We’ll sing it o’er and o’er.
It cheers our heart and warms the blood To hear them shout and roar.
We come from old Virginia, Where all is bright and gay.
Let’s all join hands and give a yell For dear old UVA.
What though the tide of years may roll And drift us far apart,
For Alma Mater still there’ll be A place in ev’ry heart.
In college days we’ll sing her praise, And so, when far away,
In memory we still shall be At the dear old UVA.
WAHOOWA, WAHOOWA UNI-V, VIR-GIN-I-A
HOO-RAH-RAY, HOO-RAH-RAY RAY!
U-V-A!