Farewell Casteen, Class of '10

University of Virginia Presi-dent John T. Casteen III urged the more than 6,200 graduating students on Sunday to use the knowledge they acquired at UVa as a force for good in the world.
“You have the capacity and the obligation to fight evil and inequity,” Casteen told the graduates. “Albert Camus wrote that, ‘The evil that is in the world almost always comes out of ignorance.’ Knowledge, then, is evil’s first enemy and good’s first line of defense. The challenge, of course, is for you to use what you have learned here in the role of agent for good.”

Casteen’s commencement address Sunday was his final public speech as president at the university he has led for the past 20 years. He will retire Aug. 1.
The mood at UVa’s Final Exercises was alternately celebratory and sorrowful.
The sea of grads clad in black caps and gowns was jubilant, cheering loudly and holding aloft hundreds of balloons, some shaped like unicorns, mugs of beer, sea horses, Dora the Explorer and a monkey. A few graduates chugged directly from bottles of bubbly. Applauding parents snapped photos as their children paraded down the Lawn.

Yet hanging over the occasion was the memory of Yeardley Love, a 22-year-old lacrosse player and member of UVa’s Class of 2010 who was slain earlier this month. Her ex-boyfriend, George Huguely, also would have graduated Sunday but he has been charged with first-degree murder in Love’s death and is no longer enrolled at UVa.
To memorialize Love and other victims of violence, an estimated 25,000 graduates, family members and faculty wore white ribbons during Sunday’s ceremony.

After the graduates walked the Lawn and found their seats in front of Old Cabell Hall, a moment of silence was held for Love and three other students — Joseph Arwood, Stephanie Jean-Charles and Scott May — who would have graduated Sunday but died in their final year of studies.
Each of them was awarded a posthumous degree Sunday.
Lawren McChesney accepted Love’s posthumous degree on her cousin’s behalf at the Woodrow Wilson Department of Politics’ diploma ceremony.
“Today we are not mourning Yeardley,” said the department’s chairman, Jeffrey Legro. “We are celebrating her achievement as a member of the Class of 2010.”
In his address, Casteen urged the graduates to remember their time at UVa as they go forward in life.

Remember, Casteen told them, “the murmur that you hear in libraries or in study groups that you hear as people work together in the evening.
“The sounds of music.
“The sounds of people talking on cell phones as they walk through corridors or down the Lawn.
“The sounds of ROTC units running past in the morning on their morning workout.
“The sounds of the marching band practicing on Carr’s Hill field.
“The sounds of student life, sorority rush, joining of other organizations, being together in the groups that define the community of student existence.
“The sounds of traffic.
“The sounds of carols sung right at the end of the semester, as you’d really rather go home but then you hear that music and you stay a little longer.
“The sounds of children on the Lawn during Halloween.
“The Chapel’s bells.
“The cheers at games, no matter what the sport.
“And the name of Yeardley Love.”

The world, Casteen said, is filled with tragedies and outrages — war, civic unrest, political oppression, acts of senseless violence.
“Just as our university has not been perfect in your time, the world to which you go is flawed and, in some senses, corrupt,” he said. “In many parts of the world, evil rules and visits destruction and inhuman conditions of life on those least deserving of it and least able to protect themselves from harm”
He challenged the new graduates to pursue careers and service that work against this evil and make the world a better place.
“We know what you can do,” he said. “We believe in you.”

Casteen cited the examples of Savanna Kuisle and Diane West, two students graduating from the Curry School of Education who are taking teaching jobs in Bangladesh. Another, Erin Thompson, will use her new degree from UVa’s School of Law as part of a National Forest Service team that analyzes the potential impact of development on federal land. Yet another, Madeleine Wright, will use her degree as a chemist in an explosives unit at the FBI’s forensics lab at Quantico.
“These women and men whom I’ve chosen as examples, and many others here today, are converting learning into action,” Casteen said. “They are deploying the power of useful knowledge. We applaud them, as we applaud every single person who completes their degree today.”