Convocation for the Class of 2029

Remarks as delivered at the Ralph S. O’Connor Recreation Center

Thank you, Vice Provost Phillips! 

And thank you Marco and Vishnu for your words and the AllNighters, Sirens, and Octopodes for your performances! Please join me in a huge round of applause for our student affairs and student orientation leaders for the phenomenal job they’ve done this week!

I am truly thrilled to join our university leaders and our faculty to welcome the great, great class of 2029.

THE Class of 2029.

As you begin your Hopkins academic journey, you are no longer the high school class of 2025.

You are becoming the Hopkins Class of ’29.

And not only that, but you are the one and only 150th class at Johns Hopkins.

I hope that you are as excited to be part of this class as we are to welcome you! 

But knowing the standards to which you hold yourselves, as Vice Provost Phillips shared a moment ago, I imagine some of you may be wondering: What does it mean to carry the weight of that history?

The answer is: You are about to find out for yourselves.

You see, you bear the label of the 150th class, but what that truly means—who this class is and will be—is as yet unknown.

And that makes sense.

Despite all those icebreakers, you may only have bonded with a few people. Like the kids you danced the night away with at the AMR II O-Week parties. Or the new roommates who spent countless hours with you searching for the Hopkins Cafe, a task not made easier when your RAs still call it the FFC.

But they are just a small subset of your class.  It may take a while to widen your circles. 

Trust me, though: you will come to know one another and share experiences that will define your class. And like the many classes who have come before you since Hopkins was founded in 1876, you will create your class’s own unique identity.

And when I say, unique. I mean, uniquely Hopkins.

For instance, there’s the class that took our longstanding lacrosse rivalry to new highs—or perhaps I should say lows—by kidnapping Testudo.

[Picture of students around Testudo]

Who’s Testudo?

[Shows UMD Testudo picture]

The 400-pound bronze tortoise mascot of the University of Maryland.

In 1947, Hopkins undergrads kidnapped him…and returned him, after a Hopkins victory, rebranded ever-so-subtly with a giant H on his back and JHU on his head.

[Close-up of rebranded tortoise]

Or the Class of 1974, the first fully co-educational graduating class, a groundbreaking group who moved into dorms entirely designed with only men in mind. At their recent 50th reunion, the women regaled me with tales of having to repurpose certain unnecessary fixtures of their formerly all-male dorm bathrooms into flowerpots. We’ll leave that image to your imagination.

Or the Class of 1928, who could be easily identified by the beanies they all were made to wear their freshman year, per tradition. And when I say, beanie, I mean the OG beanie.

[Shows President Daniels selfie in beanie.]

I thought you might be charmed by its throwback style, but colleagues persuaded me otherwise. They assured me that the bucket hat is the new beanie. So, if you haven’t already found yours and put it on, please do it now.

[Students put on their bucket hats.]

Nice.

[President Daniels takes a selfie from the stage.]

But you and I know that—no matter how on trend—a hat does not make a class.

So, Class of 2029, now it is your turn to define who you will be.   

On the one hand, each of you will have a distinctly individual journey, one guided by the deeply personal dreams that brought you here: to acquire basic mastery of a discipline or disciplines. To obtain a degree in a subject you are passionate about. To prepare yourself for the next stage of your life or career.

And to the parents and family tuning in, trust me! We will see you at Commencement to celebrate your children achieving all those things and more!

But you will do so many other things, too.

You will seek out shared experiences, like playing together on a champion lacrosse or football team. You will survive (maybe even enjoy) organic chemistry, put on plays in the new student center with your friends, or even spearhead the triumphant return of the tradition of flamingos on the lawn. You and your classmates will cross off all the things on that 150th bucket list, from eating Baltimore’s best donuts to meeting my dog Barney, perhaps at the same time. (Just saying: I also love donuts.)

And you may even kindle a romance while you’re here—we do strive to be a full-service university…just ask our Chair of the Board of Trustees Jeff Barber where he met his wife in the 90s.

But above all, you will explore new knowledge, new ideas, and new perspectives that will challenge and even change the way you understand the world and your place in it.

You will do all this as an integral part of a university community that, since its founding, has been a place that takes on—fearlessly and audaciously—the most complex and vexing challenges of our era, across the broadest possible fields of research and discovery.

A place that has transformed those investigations, innovations and ideas into everything from GPS on your phones, to Booker prize-winning novels, to cancer-fighting treatments that have helped reduce the mortality rate of that disease by 33%.

A place that at its best encourages, nay requires, its members not only to contest ideas and refuse orthodoxy, but also to develop the capacity to listen. Listening to hone arguments, to change minds, but above all to understand one another better. 

There is no doubt that you are entering this community at a time of tremendous change and upheaval. A time when we at Hopkins must renew our commitment to these skills that our world so sorely needs.

Luckily, looking out tonight at the totality of this class, I see something you may not yet: a source of boundless possibility. 

And so, as you determine—together—who this class will become in the arc of Johns Hopkins’ rich and storied history, my challenge to you is this:

Be the class that embraces that sense of limitless possibility.

Be the class that demonstrates a better way to resolve conflicts, whether the contest takes place on the global stage or in a shared dorm room.

Be the class that sees the dignity in each one of your 1300 fellow classmates. Harness that shared humanity to make the next 150 years even better for Hopkins and for the world. 

And along the way, do at least one truly memorable thing that will make it into the President’s convocation address to the Class of 2179.

Just make sure it involves pants.

[Streaker photo.]

Whatever you do, I cannot wait to see who you become.

Welcome, Class of 2029, and godspeed!