One of these was Katie Couric’s Class Day address. She was preceded by two student speakers — Jackie Bello and Jason Gilbert — who already had the crowd rolling in the aisles. Hard acts to follow, but Couric’s speech still passed muster. The main thing I thought Couric’s speech lacked, though, was the right conclusion. The note she ended on was something like, “Be courageous, go fix the world,” but I wasn’t expecting that. I thought she was, all jokes and jibes aside, building toward a less congratulatory finale.
I was expecting this because, at one point, she listed a bunch of former Princeton students — John Nash GS ’50, Sonia Sotomayor ’76, Malcolm Forbes ’41, and then Joseph Lyle Menendez ’92. Everyone had heard of all these people except for Menendez, who Couric mentioned only to say that he was spending his life behind bars. (I looked it up later: He killed his parents.) I think she also mentioned Eliot Spitzer ’81 — another alum for the ranks of infamy. She emphasized that out beyond our Orange Bubble lurked bad people and bad ideas, people and ideas which the Class of 2009 needed to fight. She said the Class of 2009 was especially well-positioned for this fight. But I was waiting for her to make a more uncomfortable conclusion: given the historical record, we’ll be lucky if everyone in the Class of 2009 even winds up on the right side of the fight.
There are plenty of former Princeton people who have done amazing things. We are reminded of this every day: famous people teach the classes, famous names grace the buildings, famous quotes plaster the walls of Frist. We’re reminded all the time of these Princeton “greats,” in part because the University wants us to go on and become the next set of greats. That’s fine — such movers and shakers are important, and it’s good to put them up on a pedestal and urge us down similar paths.
But I think we forget, too frequently, that it’s already a difficult task just being “good,” just winding up anything but a scoundrel. I think we forget what an active effort it takes to be good. I think we see the likes of Wendy Kopp ’89 (founded Teach For America) or Albert Einstein (founded modern physics) and think, “I’ll either be great like that, or I’ll be ... merely successful.”
If only that were the full range of options — if only attendance at Princeton guaranteed us that much. Obviously it does not: We need look no further than Couric’s speech to see otherwise. Some of those bad ideas came from Princeton; some of those bad people came from Princeton.
I hate to say it, Class of 2013, but some of you might suck. Some of you might at this moment be on a crash course with a future of hurting people and leaving society the worse for your presence. Some of you inevitably so: a few are born rotten. Much more common, I think, are people with the potential to be good who don’t realize how easy it is to turn bad until it’s too late, until the seeds of their badness are sewn, tended and reaped. Of course, we can’t expect to be perfect. We’ll all mess up. But the more we strive to be good — consciously “good,” thinking nothing of “great” — the better our chances get. In the words of John Adams, to his daughter, on how she should live her life: “To be good, and do good, is all we have to do.”
We will not all go on to be the next Nash or Sotomayor or Forbes. Very few of us will even come close — and whether you will be a “great” might already be out of your control. Always in your control, however, is whether you are good. Whether you cheat on your spouse, disappoint your friends, harm your country, or break the Honor Code — these are things forever in your hands. You’re at Princeton, but so what? In the words of Han Solo: “Great, kid. Don’t get cocky.”
I thought that’s what Katie Couric was getting at: We need visionaries, sure, but we also need plain old good people — and that’s hard enough. Don’t shoot for greatness if the cost is goodness, because while we’re lacking in both right now we certainly prefer having one to having neither. That’s what I expected her to say, but she didn’t, so I’ll just say it myself: As you try to be the next generation of Princeton greats, remember first just to be good.
Greg Burnham is a Math major from Memphis, Tenn. He can be reached at gburnham@princeton.edu.
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