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NewsvineAbout 1,600 undergraduate students became Stanford alumni on Sunday, as graduation festivities were held in Stanford Stadium for the first time since last year’s almost $100 million renovation.
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With the blaring sun reflecting onto an estimated 27,000 onlookers, commencement speaker Dana Gioia ’73, MBA '77 implored graduates to move beyond entertainment and rediscover the value of art in a stinging critique of modern popular culture.
Gioia, the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, was a surprise pick to speak at the ceremony. Many students were upset when administrators announced his selection in January.
The poet, who became a businessman and later a Bush appointee, was quick to make light of his dark horse status.
“A few students were especially concerned that I lacked celebrity status,” Gioia said. “It seemed I wasn’t famous enough. I couldn’t agree more. As I have often told my wife and children, ‘I’m simply not famous enough.’”
The deadpanned tease received the biggest laugh of the day, and Gioia used it as a jump-off point for his critique of popular culture. In contrast to the current celebrities of the NBA and "American Idol," the Hawthorne, Calif.-native cited the popular, intellectual figures of his childhood, including Robert Frost, Louis Armstrong and Alfred Kinsey.
“I don’t think Americans were smarter then,” Gioia said of the mid-century, “but American culture was.”
He bemoaned the “loss of recognition for artists, thinkers and scientists” since that time, which has “impoverished our culture” – and even politics.
“When a successful guest appearance on 'The Colbert Report' becomes more important than passing legislation,” Gioia said, “democracy gets scary.”
However, he also recognized his own interest in the “free market,” noting that he worked 15 years as an executive in the food industry. Gioia also admitted that he adores his big-screen TV – exemplary of a “society of unprecedented prosperity.”
“But we must remember that the marketplace does only one thing,” he added. “It puts a price on everything.”
His words came soon after the seemingly incongruous Wacky Walk, when graduates made a spectacle on their way across the field. The traditional "walk” – long considered a highlight of the ceremony - saw individual students with handmade signs, groups carrying oversized caterpillars and reenactments of the trek up Palm Drive.
President John Hennessy said that the continuation of such traditions was important in the 116th Commencement, as was the beginning of new ones in the lives of the graduates and Stanford.
Gioia, a respected poet and literary critic, followed remarks by Hennessy and told the crowd that “art is an irreplaceable way of understanding and expressing the world” – a world in which art itself has currently been pushed aside by entertainment and consumerism.
Gioia pointed to education as the “one social force…strong enough to counterbalance this profit-driven commercialization.” But, with arts education suffering from budget cuts and “myopic school boards,” a national consensus is needed to revitalize interest and investment in the arts and sciences.
“To compete successfully,” Gioia said, “this country needs continued creativity, ingenuity and innovation.”
This is the job Gioia left to Stanford graduates. And, before ending with a piece of his own – a section from his 2000 poem “Autumn Inaugural” – Gioia reminded students that their intellectual support system at Stanford “is about to end.”
“And now you face the choice of whether you want to be a passive consumer or active citizen,” he added.
The main ceremony was one of several events to commemorate graduation, including smaller departmental graduation ceremonies and senior dinners and parties in the nights before. After the main ceremony in the stadium, students, friends and family flooded campus as receptions were held, flowers and balloons were handed out and pictures were taken.
1,597 undergraduate students received Gioia’s challenge to engage the arts, and 1,644 bachelor’s degrees were awarded in the following ceremonies. In addition to undergraduate awards and honors, 2,085 master’s degrees and 968 doctoral degrees were conferred at the ceremony.
Student reaction to the speech was generally positive, according to John Shen ’07. With Gioia having admitted his non-celebrity status early on, many were more comfortable with what he later said.
“I was moved by the fact he wasn’t afraid to say that he was less well known than other speakers,” Shen said. “He was really humble about his origins, like his mixed heritage and the fact that he’s a first-generation student; I think a lot of people can relate to that.”