The Shark

Early in her Commencement address Sunday, Meredith Vieira fretted that the graduates might forget her speech years from now.

She then obliterated that possibility by turning her address into a moment of unforgettable performance art, illustrating her theme that life’s joy lies in its adventurous uncertainty.

Vieira recalled for the graduates Katy Perry’s Super Bowl XLIX halftime show in February, when a dancer dressed as a shark joined the singer on stage, gyrating madly to his own beat. On cue, a shark-attired figure (courtesy of Vieira’s assistant) pranced onto the Commencement stage for a few seconds before departing.

“Don’t ever be a conformist for convenience’s sake,” Vieira told the crowd, who, far from thinking her speech had jumped the shark, laughed and applauded.

More than a memorable gimmick, the moment underlined the theme of the journalist and TV host’s speech, which stressed remaining open to new and nonconforming possibilities. She never planned on a journalism career, she told the estimated crowd of 25,000 at Nickerson Field, until a chance course in radio reporting just months before her graduation from Tufts led to an internship with a CBS radio affiliate. (She would rise to become a correspondent for the network’s TV news magazines 60 Minutes and West 57th and coanchor of NBC’s Today show.) Yet the constant travel of a national network reporter took her away from her young son, leaving “a constant knot in my stomach.”

When Vieira was pregnant with her second son, she walked out on 60 Minutes after her request to work part-time was denied. As she slept that night, she said, “the knot in my stomach unraveled.”

She warned the graduates that being open to new possibilities wouldn’t always be easy. Recalling that her gender helped her snare her first reporter’s job in feminist-conscious 1976, she said that women journalists found little workplace support. She was fired from one job, she recalled. Bucked up by her supportive father, she returned and successfully demanded her job back. It takes such self-confidence, coupled with hard work, to succeed, she said.

Today’s graduates face a similar problem in that many businesses are wary of millennials “because they perceive you to be self-entitled, lazy, high-maintenance, and disloyal,” criticisms that her three 20-something children and her youthful staff disprove, she said.

“As you travel through life, I hope you leave deep footprints behind,” Vieira said. “Not as a result of all the people you’ve stepped on to get ahead, but rather as a result of all the lives you have lifted along the way.”

Student speaker Seung-joon Lee (CAS’15) echoed Vieira’s moral of grit in his farewell to fellow graduates. Lee told of arriving at BU in 2006 as a freshman, only to have his family’s financial woes derail his college career. Working relentless catering shifts to pay his bills, he fell behind in his academics, withdrawing from school seven years ago for an adventurous life as a soldier in his native South Korea, and later as a reporter and TV producer working with North Korean defectors. He kept in touch with old BU professors and friends during this time and returned to complete his education two years ago.

His gratitude extended to his mother, to whom, he said, he would give his graduation cap, since she missed his high school graduation because she was hospitalized, but was able to be at Nickerson Field Sunday. Reminding his fellow graduates of their own parental debts, he also recalled how they’d endured the Boston Marathon bombings, which killed BU student Lu Lingzi (GRS’13).

“Remember all those people who you are going to thank today—they will remind you that you are never alone,” he exhorted fellow graduates. “Remember your time at BU, as it will guide you in the toughest moment.”

President Robert A. Brown told the graduates that “on your shoulders rests the enormous responsibility for guiding America and the world, and for addressing the substantial challenges we face.”

In addition to Vieira (Hon.’15) (Doctor of Humane Letters), honorary degrees went to trustee Allen Questrom (Questrom’64, Hon.’15) and his wife, Kelli Questrom (Hon.’15), whose record $50 million gift to BU will expand the Questrom School of Business (Doctor of Humane Letters); Cornell William Brooks (STH’87, Hon.’15), president and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (Doctor of Laws); and George Wein (CAS’50, Hon.’15), jazz promoter and music festival producer (Doctor of Humane Letters).

Brown presented the University’s highest teaching honors to three BU faculty members. The Metcalf Cup and Prize for Excellence in Teaching went to Janice Furlong, a School of Social Work clinical associate professor. Brown gave Metcalf Awards for Excellence in Teaching to Pamela Templer, a College of Arts & Sciences associate professor of biology, and Binyomin Abrams, a College of Arts & Sciences senior lecturer in chemistry.