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Here is the text of Melissa Nobles’ speech, as prepared for delivery today.

Wow, thank you Emily and Andrew! Emily Jin on vocals and Andrew Li on saxophone, along with their talented fellow musicians!

Class of 2025! Look at you, you all look fantastic in your regalia! It’s your graduation day! You accomplished it! Congratulations!

And a big congratulations to all your loved ones, everyone who has supported you along the way.

Your parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, and friends. This is a momentous occasion for them as well. They are immensely proud of you!

A warm greeting to the family members present today on Killian Court — they’ve traveled from various places to celebrate you!

And a special acknowledgment to those watching from afar, wishing they could join you in person!

Class of 2025, you’ve created countless memories during your time here: from classes to crushes, from the East Campus REX build to the Simmons ball pit to Next Haunt, from UROPs to the Hobby Shop, and from the Outfinite to the Infinite!

Now, let’s travel back to the autumn of 2021 when you arrived at MIT.

You came from all corners of this nation and the globe — 62 countries, to be precise — and found yourselves here in Cambridge. Together, you formed MIT’s Class of 2025.

You stepped onto campus — all bright-eyed and eager — after missing many in-person high school traditions, yearning for the full high school experience. You were particularly excited for college, specifically, to be MIT students!

Even though the campus was officially fully operational for the first time since the Covid shutdown — students, staff, and faculty were all in attendance, with Zoom taking a backseat to face-to-face interactions — numerous protocols remained in place.

You had to navigate all the Covid testing because we were still monitoring. Do you recall those Ziploc bags?

You swabbed and submitted attestations because you desired the keys to open doors to labs, classrooms, and all the experiences that make MIT, MIT.

And once granted access, you found a campus that was polished and inviting, yet somewhat dusty after being largely unoccupied for a while. There was no guide on how to revive this place.

You didn’t hesitate.

You selected MIT because you enjoy solving problems, and your inner determination emerged to breathe life back into the campus, to make it a home.

You were inquisitive, assessed the surroundings, and began exploring the past to craft your future.

You sought guidance from seniors, the Class of 2022, who helped acclimate you, teaching you the ropes, and they certainly delivered. They were acutely aware of their limited time on campus, and they instructed you on “how to MIT.”

You also delved into archival records of clubs, absorbing history to propel you forward. You filled in the blanks by conversing with faculty, staff, and alumni. You weighed your options, determining what you wanted to revive and what to set aside.

And true to your identity as MIT students, you introduced new initiatives. You innovated and created.

You forged communities, starting from FPOPs and orientation through 8.01, 18.02, your HASS courses, and your p-set groups.

You cultivated communities in your dormitories and within your sororities and fraternities.

You formed communities through your athletics, hobbies, and the arts.

You established communities across the entire campus.

And you realized that building communities isn’t always straightforward or quick. It demands effort, patience, and an openness to listen to and learn from others.

Yet, in the end, it is profoundly rewarding because you’ve met and formed friendships with truly remarkable individuals. Some share similar backgrounds, while others come from very different experiences. From this diverse and intriguing group, you’ve found your crew — the people with whom you’ve shared not only interests — but your aspirations, fears, concerns, laughter, and tears. You’ve forged genuine connections — connections that pave the way for lifelong friendships.

And over the past four years, right in front of us, you’ve exemplified the lasting significance and power of higher education to transform lives.

Throughout your journey at MIT, you conceptualized, prototyped, and experimented. You produced new knowledge, navigated uncertainty, collaborated, and, of course, optimized.

Now, on this momentous graduation day, we send you forth with immense pride and hope.

Yet simultaneously, we are releasing you into the world during a particularly tough and challenging period. It’s a time when we are all being urged to concentrate on traditions that we should uphold and defend. It’s also a moment calling upon us to establish new traditions, better aligned with human flourishing in this century.

It’s a time when the challenges are substantial, the solutions are intricate, the stakes are elevated, and the paths are uncharted.

But, Class of 2025, you are equipped to tackle these formidable challenges. In the words of one of your classmates: MIT instilled in the Class of 2025 the importance of having “confidence in your competence.”

You are prepared to evaluate your surroundings, identify what is outdated and what is failing, learn from history, utilize your talents and abilities, and generate new knowledge.

You are ready to address the toughest challenges! You are ready to shape the future.

And while you embark on this journey, I urge you to keep MIT’s values and mission central to your endeavors: to be bold and imaginative in addressing these significant challenges and to do so with empathy and generosity.

Now, more than ever, we — meaning the world’s populace — need you to step forward.

Once again, Congratulations Class of 2025!

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