At 96th Commencement, 658 Receive Degrees

Skidmore's 96th Commencement Saturday was among the wetter and chillier in recent memory, but the enthusiasm of the graduates was undiminished. Six hundred and forty-eight received bachelor's degrees while ten received master's degrees in liberal degrees.

Honorary degrees were awarded to former NBC anchor and managing editor Tom Brokaw, New York Times Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse and sculptor, writer and film producer Nora Noranjo-Morse.

Also addressing the Class of 2007: Board Chair Suzanne Corbet Thomas '62; Kyle Paolantonio, president of the Class of 2007, and Deborah Sehl Coons '72, president of the Alumni Association.

In his welcome, President Philip A. Glotzbach said that he and wife Marie will "forever hold the Class of 2007 in a special place in our hearts."

"You and your parents were the first group I addressed in orientation. We all arrived at this new place inevitably feeling perhaps a bit lost and disoriented – not knowing how to get around, not knowing just what this new stage in our lives would portend for us. In short, we became beginners together."

Following a Skidmore tradition, the keynote commencement address was delivered by a faculty member chosen by the graduating class. Linda Hall, assistant professor of English, encouraged the graduates to consider the value of praise, and to guard against casually over-praising.

"By your tenth reunion," she said, "I expect to have a clear idea of what you've meant to me. All I can say now is that I have learned more during this four-year stretch of my life than during any other."

";I hold you mostly responsible," she continued. "I thank you for changing my mind in all sorts of unnerving ways. I';ve never known and can't imagine this college without you. You have been good, and often when I did not expect it or deserve it, you have been great."