Massachusetts College of Art Commencement
Friday, May 20, 2005
Matt Moore, SGA President - Speech

My first year at MassArt, I lived in Smith Hall, the freshman residence building on campus. One of the activities I cherished most from my first year was walking to the Fenway Theater on Friday and Saturday nights. At midnight, the theater would show a variety of older movies such movies as, “The Goonies”, “Ghostbusters”, “The Shining” to name a few. The audience at the midnight movie was comprised mostly of unruly, and, I’m not going to lie to you, occasionally intoxicated college students—Boston University, Boston College and Northeastern typically having the largest representation—and you can usually tell by their collegiate sweatshirts.

Waiting for the movie to start, a theater employee stands in front of the audience and gives away mediocre prizes for those that can answer obvious trivia questions or embarrass themselves. On one night I was with a few other MassArt friends seeing “The Big Lebowski.” The prize guy asks if it’s anyone's birthday and, of course, thirty people raise their hands (Raise hand). He then adds, "And can prove it." (Drop hand) One of the girls in our group, it was her birthday. She goes to the front of the theater, shows him her license and he asks her name and what school she’s from. She says "Katie from MassArt" and someone from the theater yells: "GO TO A REAL SCHOOL!"

The unanimous laughter in the theater was a telling moment in my MassArt career. I considered transferring schools my freshman year. There is a slogan that can be seen around MassArt that says, “MassArt Made Me Fearless.” I disagree. The laughter in that theater scared the hell out of me. I found out that once I was able to disregard the world outside MassArt, it became easier to forget what I was afraid of. But now, with everyone asking me (whining) “what is your plan”, “what are you going to do”, “where do you see yourself.” That initial fear is real more than ever.

A decade ago the Department of Labor said that the average worker entering the workplace would have five to seven careers, not jobs, careers in a lifetime. According to labor researcher and former Wisconsin Representative Steve Gunderson, a worker entering today’s workplace will have ten to fourteen careers in their lifetime. Compound that with that stark reality that we live in a society that generally doesn’t look at art, never mind pay for it, and the current unemployment rate for eighteen to twenty-five year olds is seventeen percent. We need help. One of the challenges with not going to a real school is there isn’t necessarily a career path of pillowy grass ready for us to trot down. For many of us graduates, we’ll have to trail blaze and machete our way through a dense thorny underbrush of artistic opposition. We need all the help we can get.

MassArt allowed me to momentarily forget my fear, but it didn’t make me fearless. MassArt, however, did do something: it made me curious. I discovered quickly that regardless of artistic medium, if you ignore your interests and ideas, if you just do the assignment, you won’t be successful and it will be painful. Real schools and the real world don’t want you to be curious. If you went through public school you know what it means to have the natural inquisitive behavior driven out of you. Someone in one of my classes aptly described our contemporary idea of education as teachers asking students questions rather than students asking teachers questions. When you are curious, you learn. When you learn, you own an indestructible power of knowledge. Please don’t forget or neglect your curiosity.

Graduates of 2005, go forth, commence, be curious and be grateful you didn’t go to a real school. Thank you.

I would like to introduce Laurie Anderson, MSAE candidate and representative for the graduate students.