A fond farewell

Tom Wiggins dropped off a five-page art history paper on architecture Friday afternoon, wrapping up his academic career. \nHe shrugs it off as no big deal.\nWiggins hadn't been thinking much about graduation -- and he's still not sure what he's going to do with himself.\n"Everyone's been asking if I have a job lined up," he said. "Next question."\nWiggins, a fine arts major who maintained a 3.7 grade point average, received his degree at the Saturday morning commencement in Memorial Stadium with 6,064 fellow graduating seniors. Their family and guests filled up the 30,000 seats on the west side of the stadium.\nSome who showed up while the band blared the processional had to stand at the exits with police officers and sharp-eyed paramedic personnel. A few made their way to the bleachers in the north endzone, where shade was scant. \nSwamped with the 90 degree heat, many parents and grandparents ducked inside the foyer and watched the ceremony on closed circuit televisions. Some even shelled out $2.50 for the ice-cold fountain drinks.\nThe sun bore down unmercifully, but the 172nd commencement was uncharacteristically brief.\nBloomington Chancellor Kenneth Gros Louis -- the keynote speaker -- kept his comments short.\nGros Louis, who's retiring as chancellor after 38 years at the end of June, said he could identify with the black-robed students chatting on cell phones and knocking around beach balls. \n"In a sense, your commencement is also my commencement," he said. "Unlike most speakers at such occasions, I will live and die by the same advice I'm giving you."\nQuoting Shakespeare, John Steinbeck, John Kennedy and the Oxford English Dictionary, Gros Louis riffed off the theme of frontiers.\n"I'm urging us to accept the notion of a frontier, in that American sense, not as a border of a limit, but something unknowable, yet reachable, something with risks, but great rewards if we clear ground and build correctly," he said.\nThe lifelong academic asked the graduates to pursue their aspirations and think great thoughts.\n"I think of others in Bloomington, and I'm sure in your towns and cities as well, who don't even know they have a frontier, who believe that their futures will be identical to their presents and their pasts," he said. "So many in our country live their current lives in discomfort or fear or humiliation, but many have the natural ability to achieve beyond what they might even dare to hope."\nGros Louis received an honorary doctorate along with Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra Music Director Raymond John Leppard and Jack Gill, a venture capitalist with ties to the Kelly School of Business.\nBefore conferring degrees to graduates in the 12 schools, President Myles Brand invoked Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin.'" \n"The experts predicted we would colonize Mars, eliminate disease and have 20-hour workweeks," he said. "Well, the future belongs to those who build it -- not those who predict. I ask you to have a creative relationship with change"