Dean Khurana, Vice President Gore, and the class of 2019 if you are hearing this
speech then I regret to inform you that my @college account will soon be
terminated.
I don't know most of you but I thought it'd be most efficient to spam
all 3,000 of you anyway.
Feel free to reach me at my new email address
Nick needs a job at gmail.com.
Now that that's out of the way, good afternooooon
Class of 2019!
[CHEERING]
My name is Nick Hornedo, and I must confess I don't think I belong here.
Now I don't just mean up here on the stage with a microphone so I will say the
power is so intoxicating I might pass out.
[LAUGHING]
No, I mean here – graduating with all
of you.
Four years ago I arrived with the hopes of becoming as intelligent and
influential as people like Al Gore, Sonia Sotomayor, and Jared Kushner.
[CHUCKLING]
But standing here today I just feel underachieving and way over my head.
Also like Jared Kushner.
Freshman year Rakesh tried to assure us that we do belong here, that we
were just as good as anybody else.
Funny, my mom said the same thing.
In many ways
Rakesh is a lot like my mother.
He's warm and wants me to do my best.
He surprises
me with cookies.
He's a powerful Mexican woman from the border
– wait no, oh
Scratch that.
Talk about transformative.
Yet despite the soothing words you get from your parents or your college dean
there's so much here that can make you feel like you don't belong.
Comps,
socio-economic barriers,
2-step verification,
sometimes I want to be
remembered for more than 30 days.
[LAUGING]
So, over these four years we looked for ways to
prove that we were worthy of Harvard.
Some of you found that in the humanities
where you studied 19th century American history
some of you decide to study casebooks so you could go to Goldman and make obscene
amounts of money.
And if you're Drew Faust you were like, porque no los dos!
[LAUGHING]
Most of you found belonging on housing day when you celebrated your new homes
and ridiculed those who got Quaded
And that was it was pretty hurtful,
particularly as a POC, person of Currier,
and so to my fellow quadlings I say do
not let these microaggressions get you down and to the other 75% of you I say
check your 'rivilege.
[LAUGHING]
We tried so hard to prove we belonged here
we often divided ourselves and that sucks because nobody wants to be told
where they do and don't belong.
Like when Adams says you don't belong in there D-Hall
because it's community night.
Or when HUHS says you do belong in
quarantine because you have the mumps.
That reminds me, um, some of you may have read the Crimson this morning – wait sorry
that's a lie, no, none of you did – um, but if you did you would have noticed that the
restaurant John Harvard's closed, or is closing,
indeed many independently run
businesses questioned whether they belonged here
to which landlords responded with a resounding no –
In fact I'd like to take a
moment to pay tribute to all the local businesses who just couldn't be here
with us today.
(playing Scottish Bagpipes - Funeral Song)
Cafe Algiers, gentrified August 2017.
This one hurts: Petsi Pies gentrified January 2019.
Market in the Square,
(shouting) seized November 2017.
Cafe Pamplona
wait actually, Cafe Pamplona is still open –
I'm just getting ahead of myself.
Of course, not everything here was about exclusion.
This year the Hasty Pudding theatricals
decided to integrate.
Making the bold statement that women,
too, can be unfunny.
[LAUGHING]
Our class found unity at the Harvard-Yale game where we cheered our
team on to victory 50% of the time.
But, hey, you know that's life you take the
good with the bad. I mean for every Red's spiced chicken
there was a Red's Best Fish.
For every Harvard meme for "elitist 1% tween" there
was an obscene meme for rescinded prefrosh tweens.
For every record-setting
endowment, there's an investment in funds that support the prison industrial
complex, as well as the fossil fuel industry, making President Bacow,
(shouting) the Harvard management company, and everybody here complicit in the mass incarceration
of people of color and the greatest threat to humanity to our planet has
ever seen.
[CHEERING]
This guy knows what I'm talking about.
Which reminds me for every popular vote, there's an electoral vote.
[LAUGHING]
I'm sorry Mr. Vice President, but the search for Veritas isn't always
convenient.
[LAUGHING]
For many of you the need to belong hits hardest when you return home.
I'm reminded of a song from Lin-Manuel Miranda's In the Heights, in which Nina
- we've got some cast members here -
In which Nina, a first-gen Latinx student
returns home from freshman year at Stanford and she sings about the
pressure of being worthy.
She sings,
straighten the spine,
smile for the neighbors,
everything's fine, everything is cool.
The standard reply:
lots of tests, lots of papers, smile, wave goodbye and pray to the sky, oh god,
what will my parents say?
My sophomore year I acted in theaterical's production of "In the
Heights" and those lyrics really resonated with me.
I, too, wanted my family
to be proud, proud of me, and proud of the love and sacrifice they gave and made so
that I could end up at a place like Harvard.
Um, at the same time there were
rumblings that there wasn't enough Latinx talent to pull off this kind of
show, which was funny, but not haha funny, more Lampoon funny.
For our cast much of the goal of each performance was to prove ourselves to
the doubters. We had four performances and they each had a different energy.
The first performance had the excitement and adrenaline of something new the second
performance we relaxed and even made a couple mistakes the third performance
the show really grew into something beautiful
that we could not have anticipated and so by the time we got to the fork show
we worried had we peaked and what would the audience think our director looked
at us and said this show isn't for them it's for each other you'll drive
yourself crazy if you try and end it on a bang so just take this last day as a
chance to celebrate each other and the times we've had I'm pretty sure I don't
belong here and if you still have any doubts maybe
you don't belong here either but let's just set that aside you don't have to
feel unworthy just because you failed a midterm or because you got cut from
satire five three times or because your last chance dance ended with only a kiss
it was only a kiss maybe we'll never truly belong at a place like Harvard
maybe we don't belong among the world's best and brightest as Jared Kushner's of
the world but class of 2019 I can say without a doubt that right now we all
belong with each other does it matter who you knew or what clubs you joined
because when things went well we all celebrate it at the Li PES when things
went poor we all mourned at jefes and we never ate it sombrero class of
2019 we got one day left don't make it your best just make it count thank you
and thank you mom dad and George for everything