Alumni came together en masse over Memorial Day weekend to party at Campus Dance with graduating seniors and their families and to lead or attend forums on a wide variety of issues (in which many alumni showcased the results of their careers of “constructive irreverence” and innovation). Alums took their kids to Field Day, met old friends at affinity group receptions—Catholic, Latinx, LGBT, Asian/Asian American, and Jewish, among others—and danced again at Unity Funk Night on Saturday.

Throughout the weekend men and women from reunion classes immersed themselves for a time in the social life that began during their undergraduate days, and dipped their toes once again into the pomp and circumstance of the Commencement procession on Sunday. Then, after the parties and reunions and speeches were over, President Christina Paxson ended with the same words she spoke at Opening Convocation to the Class of 2016 four and a half years ago—the first admitted during her presidency, and so her “first” class.

“I hope you will be prepared to change a world that too often resists change,” she said, “and too often tolerates the intolerable. To apply this constructive irreverence to the world and all that lies beyond those gates is your challenge and, I hope, your destiny.”