Commencement Address: Professor Emeritus James Halpern (May 17, 2025)
Good morning. Thank you, Pres Wheeler. Welcome guests and friends and family of the class of 2025. You make this day special. Congratulations to the graduates.
The SUNY New Paltz mission statement reads: “Our goal is for students to gain knowledge, skills, and confidence to contribute as productive members of their communities and professions and active citizens in a democratic nation and a global society”. This morning, I want to talk to you about some very inspiring New Paltz students who were affiliated with our Institute for Disaster Mental Health.
For many years after the attack on the WTC on September 11, 2001, our students supported the 9/11 memorial anniversary ceremony in New York City. As survivors passed by the footprint of the Towers, our students offered tissues, bottles of water and an ear. Many survivors came from far away and were grateful for the contact they had with these young people. At the end of the long day when I met with the students, they asked – “why did so many people thank me, I didn’t really do anything, I was just there.” They were thanked because they were willing to be with a very diverse group of disaster survivors (rich and poor of many races and ethnicities) who were in grief and pain. While most people want to head in the opposite direction, our students were a “supportive presence.” They did not appreciate how important, meaningful and helpful they were.
In 2005, our students supported disaster survivors in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Some professionals were concerned that the students could not cope with the demands of disaster response or the sights and sounds of what looked like the apocalypse. Our students, in fact, were up to the task. They were up at dawn, worked 12 hours a day bringing food and supplies to devastated neighborhoods and did not want to come home after their 10-day deployment. Their ability, motivation, idealism, energy and common sense was inspiring, and their lives were changed by working to help people in need and making a difference. They remind us that young adults like you can make very significant contributions. More recently, students from the IDMH assisted hurricane survivors in Puerto Rico in 2017, in Coastal Plaine Texas in 2019, and in Florida just this past winter.
Natural disasters are getting more intense, lasting longer and impacting more people here in the US and around the world as exemplified by many recent deadly floods, hurricanes and wildfires and you all lived through another kind of disaster – a global pandemic. My generation has left you a world in much need of repair and I encourage you to do your part in repairing it. When I did international work overseas training caregivers and first responders working together to deal with trauma, I was concerned that we did not do nearly enough. One doctor, a colleague and friend, said to me, “if one child wets the bed and is not punished because the parents understand he is not a bad child but has been traumatized we have accomplished much.” A small change can be a powerful one.
As you are about to graduate, I ask that you think about how you can commit to doing something to repair the world you have inherited. Consider doing a few hours at a food bank, volunteer as a firefighter, rescue squad, Red Cross or hospital volunteer, teach someone to read, volunteer for a political campaign that supports your values and be sure to vote.
Let these past SUNY New Paltz students be an inspiration to all of you. If you provide assistance helping someone prepare for, respond to or recover from a disaster or help someone in crisis or in need, it will be something you will remember for the rest of your life.
SOME EXCERPTS from marge Piercy’s Poem “To Be of Use”
I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.
I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.
There are many ways to serve and be of use to others, even when our world feels disrupted. Your education and experience here at New Paltz will allow each of you to discover your own unique way to make small but powerful changes in our community and the world – emulating the essence of Piercy’s poem -– TO BE OF USE.
Again, congratulations and we look forward to what you will accomplish in the years ahead. Oh – And when you are out in the world – BEING OF USE – remember to call your parents.
Thank you!