| 2009 Commencement Student Addresses |
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Undergraduate Student Address Graduate Student Address Cynthia Cranmer Erb — Undergraduate Student Address Dean Davis, Chairs Mary Comerio, Karen Christensen, and Linda Jewell, Faculty, Fellow Students, Parents and Honored Guests, Thank you for the opportunity to speak on behalf of my fellow graduates, the Class of 2009. What an incredible journey this has been. I know we all remember when we got the formal letter of acceptance to Cal. It said that, “There is truly no place like Berkeley. Anywhere. And you’ve earned a place here…Take the world’s ideas and forge new ones…Change the world...You can do it and you can do it here. Please join us at Berkeley.” Whether you came right from high school or transferred from a community college, getting here was a tough process of preparation and achievements. The UC application required us to write a personal statement, and in a limited word count, we had to provide insight into ‘who’ we are, and the kinds of challenges we have had. Each of us has a story of personal experiences that shaped our lives. I am part of the generation of Americans who had nuclear attack drills in school. When we heard the siren, we were instructed to get under our desks, put our head down, and be sure that we didn’t look at ‘the light’. By staying down with our eyes closed, we thought we were safe. Just how absurd was that exercise? If it had been an actual nuclear explosion, we all know that no amount of eye closing would have saved us. No one told us that. In a patent manipulation of information, the truth about nuclear weapons was withheld. Our school motto here at Cal tells us “Fiat lux”. Let There Be Light. Berkeley has given us the freedom to question reigning wisdom and protocol — to question authority — gradually increasing our awareness of the issues that were exposed in all of our classes, both in Environmental Design as well as the departments outside. When we went to class and learned about events in history that hampered appropriate human development — things like racial injustice, crimes against humanity, political misrepresentations, unfair systems of justice, and mismanaged ecological systems, we were enlightened. The University of California at Berkeley, in the wisdom of its founders, and those who came before us, strove to make a clear focus a Berkeley mandate. Kind of a “let there be light, so you can see the truth” attitude that they had, and through the focus of our instructors, we found out that environmental design is not just the physical representation of our design training, but it is also the iterative effort of us as a part of humanity. Good design comes from a conscientious citizen of a global community, who is aware of environmental, social, cultural and political impact of design. We came to Cal to learn, and in our time here, the process for learning gave way to an imaginative interplay of forms and concepts developed on an experimental framework. We created magic. We surprised ourselves when we fell into the rhythm of studio work. There were moments of frustration as we tried to adapt our underdeveloped design skills to meet the demands of the progressive faculty ideals, but when we could talk about the design issues that we were passionate about — issues we had carefully analyzed — the confidence in our voice and the well-connected thoughts were articulated with ease. We got it, and in turn, the reviewers got it. The choreography of these reviews depended on the value of our ideas and how well we did our research — the soul-searching component when we infused the responsibilities we have to humanity, to sustainability, to economy of resources, and the freedom that Berkeley gave us to reach out and explore — try and fail, and finally, try and succeed. This is the moment that we reflect on the time we have spent at Cal, and our view on the journey ahead. As graduates in the year 2009, we will be the pioneers for success in a domestic economy ravaged by mismanagement, and a global marketplace that is seeing the worst economic conditions since the Great Depression. This time in history, more than ever before, we will look for inspiration from our education and our national leaders. None of us will ever forget witnessing one of our country’s most significant presidential elections from this ‘ground zero’ for political action and change. What better place than Berkeley, to come together and watch President Barack Obama validate our spirited engagement with progressive thinking? In his victory speech in Chicago, he said, “And to all those who have wondered if America’s beacon still burns as bright: the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals — democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope.” Guided by an administration that calls for a renewed spirit of service, patriotism, and responsibility, we start our next journey. As we face the challenges of the specialized path we have chosen, we will draw from the lessons we learned and the vision we captured during our time at Cal. We came to Berkeley for a great education from the world’s premier public university. A university whose guiding principles show us that we should observe the world and its challenges in the brightest and harshest light possible. The innovative architect Le Corbusier noted that “Architecture is the learned game, correct and magnificent, of forms assembled in the light.” It is now our mandate to be informed designers and solve problems. The brilliant blend of humanitarian understanding and design acumen that we earned from this special time at Cal will be our tool for assembly, and the enlightened way that we form the environmental landscape, will be our legacy. Ladies and Gentlemen, the Class of 2009. Avigail Sachs — Graduate Student Address Salutations. When this college was established, fifty years ago, it was the first institution to use the name ‘environmental design’. A few years ago I became interested in this change of nomenclature. Why did landscape architects, city and regional planners, and architects feel the need to invent a new term for their joint college? As my dissertation research progressed I found answers to my question and have also found inspiration in the work of the founders of this college. I therefore want to share a small piece of this history with you today. The idea for a joint college at Berkeley was first suggested in 1950. The founders of the college, many of whom had worked together during the Great Depression on New Deal projects, were committed to intra-professional collaboration. They worried about what professionals — landscape architects, city and regional planners, or architects — would do under stress. Where should they turn for ideas? Would it be to the library to look at other designs or at historical precedents? Would it be to the great master or the guru? The founders of this college hoped that it would be none of the above. Not that they did not appreciate beauty or individual creativity, but they worried that an emphasis on personal expression will take away from a commitment to finding social and responsible solutions. They wanted future professionals to develop their designs and plans while in dialog with other designers and planners. They also hoped that professionals would talk to scientists, especially social scientists, and they established research programs in all three departments. The idea for a combined college had support within the university and within about three years there was a draft plan for bringing the three departments together (landscape was in agriculture and architecture and city planning were independent departments at the time.) The faculty of the future CED then spent about five years arguing over the name. They even considered settling on The College of Architecture, City and Regional Planning and Landscape Architecture. They were looking for a name that would not identify any of the departments but rather the collaboration between them. This is why “environmental came to design”. Environment for the founders of the CED was the something that was bigger than the purview of any one profession — it was more than a single building, a park, a highway system: It was the connections between them. Since the late 1950’s the idea of environmental design, and the college, have undergone changes and the original idea has been covered with many layers. At times it even seems that it has been lost among other agendas and goals, even though both faculty and students here are constantly creatively rethinking the meaning of collaboration. With the wide spread discussion of the New New-Deal this has intensified, and I have heard about some great plans for this college. I do not think it is lost, however, only obscured. The real threat to collaboration is not the lack of a committee or a program (in other words lack of visibility) but the strong pull of individual creativity. You have to have some ego if you are going to engage in changing the world and I can speak from within my own profession — architecture — that the role model of the lone artist is still alive and well. But it is hard to justify personal genius when you are with people who ask questions, who want to know, who have opinions. When students organize sustainability groups and professors teach about world poverty. Even if you do go off on flights of fancy, as we all do, having a community based on collaboration keeps you grounded. A community like this also counteracts one of the main problems of collaboration — it is tedious, it is difficult, and it is rarely acknowledged. Having such a community makes choosing to collaborate so much easier. This support is what the CED has given me in the past seven years and in this sense it has been a home, much more than I could have imagined or expected it to be. So my hope for the future is simple. That the CED continue to be a home and source of inspiration for many more years to come, and that my fellow graduates and I will find similar homes wherever we go, and if not, that we will be able to take the energy of the CED to new places. |