Undergraduate Address

Naomi Tutu

It is a great honor and a privilege for me to be the Commencement speaker and a privilege to be a part of the Class of 2007 — clearly the best class at Bentley to ever graduate.

I first must apologize for the weather. In our culture, rain is a blessing. So as I was preparing for this commencement, I prayed all week for blessings to come down on graduates and their families. I guess as I was praying (in my native language) for blessings to come down on the graduates and their families, I know now when I’m here I should pray in English.

I wanted to talk this morning about the myth of the self-made person. Now I know that you’re all familiar with the myth because you hear about it all the time, about the great person in our society, the person who pulled themselves up by the bootstraps, who came from nothing and is now a millionaire, an inventor, a great medical person, a great teacher — but, “I did it by myself, ” is a great myth. I say it is a myth because as we listen more to the stories of these people we realize that there’s no way that there can be a self-made person.

Over and over we hear, “I borrowed $2,000 from my parents,” so that’s $2,000 you didn’t make yourself, OK?  And “I started (a venture) in my mother’s garage but never cleaned up after myself,” so really, that’s part of mom’s investment in his own making. Or “my friends got together and we charged everything on my friends and my credit cards,” so obviously your friends have some investment in who you are today.

And like all myths, the myth of the self-made person in and of itself is not dangerous. In and of itself, it is actually a way to encourage us, a way to make us know that there is a way in which any of us can reach heights that either we or our families had never imagined for us and that there are (ways) and goals that are standing out there for us to achieve. And if we put our mind to it there is very little that can stop us. But unfortunately the danger of that myth is when we begin to take it as complete truth, when those people who are identified as self-made begin to believe the truth of their own legend. The flip side of the self-made person is the idea that you owe nothing to anybody else — that once you have made it, your responsibility is to yourself and yourself alone and that your responsibility is to live the best, most extraordinary life that you possibly can. And so we read about golden shower curtains and 600 homes in 600 different countries around the world — for two people.

And we hear about completely extravagant living with little idea or attention paid to the rest of the world and our connection to it. Now I know that those of you sitting here are not self-made people.  You know that those people sitting behind you, your family and friends, have helped you reach this point. You know that your parents took out that second mortgage to pay for this Bentley education which I understand is not cheap. You know that those faculty and staff gave you the skills to receive this degree. You know that the friends who stayed up studying with you and those who came before you, who put up the buildings so that you had classrooms and those who gave to this college so you would have the wonderful facilities you now have.  You know that each of those people have a part of that degree that you are going to receive today. And not to say or take away in any way from your own achievements because you are the people who took those exams; you are the people who wrote those term papers; you are the people who will be receiving this degree because of the work that you did. 

But all those other people have a part in your honor today. I remember coming home and saying “I got the winning goal in Field Hockey. I did great, I scored the winning goal,” and my parents would say,  “wonderful, but you know, you couldn’t have done it without the rest of the team, obviously.” I’d say, “Yeah, right, but I did score the winning goal.’”

But over and over my parents would try to say to us, “what you achieve is not yours alone. It is actually a wonderful feeling to know that you are a part of something larger than yourself.”

I grew up in Apartheid South Africa and just 13 years ago I got to vote for the first time in the country of my birth. I have been able to see many of those who prepared that path for me.

I saw the family of a 16 year-old who was killed  protesting education in South Africa. I have had an opportunity to spend time with President Mandela and see the effects of working in those chalk mines on his eyes and know that that was a sacrifice for me.  I have spent time and gone to school with children . . . who grew up knowing that they would only get to see their father twice a year and never touch him because he was serving Life (in prison) for protesting Apartheid. I had the opportunity to attend funerals for young people who had left South Africa because of their political activism and had been followed across the land and killed in their sleep and knowing that they died so I could vote.

So I have been fortunate to see with my own eyes some of  those who have made a better life possible for me. You might not be able to have seen those who built this university, you might not have been able to see those students who came before you and kind of molded the professors in preparation for you.

But all those who went before us prepared the way for us and most of those people will not ask us to pay them back. But what they do ask of us is to pay it forward, that we make this world a better place for those who come after us in the way that they made this a better place for us. They ask that we not buy into the idea that just because we have achieved, we owe no one. But rather that the very act of our achievement is that we owe somebody an opportunity, a hand up, support, advice.

And all your faculty, all the administration, all of your families ask of you is that you go out and use the gift that you’ve been given and the talents that you hold to make this world better for those who follow you.

Congratulations and thank you.

Naomi Tutu
May 19, 2007
Bentley College