10%

Bates Baccalaureate 2023

Graduating seniors pause to remember, rejoice, and give thanks

By Bates College

June 2^nd, 2023

Saturday, May 27: Baccalaureate

“Welcome seniors, and welcome families and friends gathered here to share in this unique, and decidedly student-created, Bates ceremony,” said President Clayton Spencer, addressing the gathering at Baccalaureate on the Historic Quad.

“Coming together in this way is an experience we will never take for granted again after the events of the past three years.”

Prelude

Before the soon-to-be-Bates graduates proceed into the Baccalaureate service — and just after Facility Services staff put the finishing touches on the Historic Quad setup — they mingle with friends and family, getting some of the many pictures they’ll take this weekend. Loved ones also take time to write “blessing tags” and attach them to trellises that the seniors will walk under.

Processional

Led by President Clayton Spencer, Multfaith Chaplain the Rev. Brittany Longsdorf, and Baccalaureate speaker Chris Schiff, seniors — decked out in cap and gown for the first time this weekend — move into the service as the Senior Band plays.

The Celebration

At the microphone, Baccalaureate speakers reflect on their time at Bates. Musical and dance offerings performed by seniors delight those gathered.

BACCALAUREATE ADDRESS

The senior class chose Chris Schiff, music and arts librarian, to deliver the Baccalaureate Address, titled “Drink the Wave.” Schiff drew from a postmodern book by John Fowles, The Magus. “Do you drink the water or the wave?”

“I suspect that you thought that getting an education was going to be like drinking water…sensible and predictable,” Schiff said. But of course it was not, mostly because of the tsunami that was COVID.

In high school, when Schiff was asked the water/wave question, he answered, “without any hesitation, that I was going to drink the water.” But instead, those glasses of water would “recede into the distance, and instead I would find myself facing chaotic turmoil: the metaphorical wave.”

'The Only Answer'

“The only answer to the challenge, ‘Which do you drink? The water or the wave?’ is that we drink both. We don’t get to choose logical progression over chaos. Chaos and turmoil are always around us.”

“I ask you to take a breath and think of Baccalaureate, today’s rite of passage, as a day at the beach and that wonderful moment when the waves crest and begin to break all around us.

Amidst all of the chaos and turmoil that you have experienced in the last four years and will experience in the future, I hope that the wave has brought you and will always bring you moments of exhilaration and overwhelming joy.”

RECESSIONAL AND POSING FOR PICTURES WITH CAPS AND GOWNS

Leaving the Quad to the songs Celebrate and 1999 played by the Senior Band, seniors pass through one of the festooned archways to greet family and friends, pose for posterity, and embrace each other and the realization that they are about to cross a threshold.