New Pole

University Commencement was in a new location this year, Arthur Ashe stadium in Queens, home of the US Tennis Open. It's a long way from where most students and their families, not to mention faculty and staff, live, though, and the New York City subway was, as is increasingly its wont, uncooperative. We started half an hour late, faculty lined up in an airless corridor waiting, and baked together for the next two hours of recognitions and speeches...  but it's still an exciting experience to see the sea of faces of fresh graduates. Where will they go next? Where will they be in five years, in ten, in twenty? One of our Honorary Degree recipients, who received a BA and and MA from New School, became the first African American women to go to the North Pole, and then also to the South - both after she turned seventy-five! Graduates, commence!