My Commencement Address at Wheaton

I want to thank Wheaton College , out here in Illinois, for inviting me to give this year’s commencement address.

I recognize that, as a practicing Catholic, I was a difficult choice for the school to make—since Wheaton College is, after all, the school so well featured in the movie Prozac Nation . A school with such a strong tradition of openness to atheism, polymorphous sexuality, and the rejection of religious affiliation.

It is fitting that your school should boast such famous alumni as, um, let’s see now. The list says Ken Babby, whom I don’t actually know, but he’s listed as the youngest senior officer in the history of the Washington Post , which is sure something.

And Dr. Mary Ellen Avery, and former New Jersey Governor Christie Todd Whitman, and literary agent Esther Newberg, again whom I don’t know but I’m sure she’s famous. Oscar-nominated actress Catherine Keener, too.

All of you should be enormously proud that you are graduating from school, as many famous people did, most of them anyway, and I’m grateful that you would have a Catholic like me in to speak about the challenges facing America’s new graduates as they enter the world after being trained in Feminist Criticism and Introduction to Film Studies .

I . . . um, I’m sorry, what? You mean that there is more than one Wheaton College? That the Evangelical one in Illinois isn’t the former women’s college in Massachusetts?

That can’t be right, Ann Curry herself told me they were the same.

If she doesn’t know what she’s talking about, then who does? I mean, come on, she’s the news anchor of The Today Show .