Though graduates may be entering an economy in crisis — nationally and internationally, Georgetown law professor David Vladeck on May 17 told this year’s group of Law Center graduates that lawyers are needed now more than ever.

“You are joining the profession at exactly the right moment,” Vladeck said during Law Center’s afternoon commencement on Healy Lawn. “There is much work to be done. There are millions and millions of Americans who urgently need your help.”

Vladeck, who is also the newly appointed consumer protection director for the Federal Trade Commission, told the audience that with crisis comes opportunity.

“Our nation’s financial crisis may be the greatest challenge our graduates ever face,” he said, “… (but) the poor, the unemployed and the dispossessed need the help of lawyers to reclaim their lives, and they need help now.”

The honors have been bestowed and the diplomas distributed, but for many of Georgetown’s new graduates there was one more event to attend before they said their goodbyes to the Hilltop.

Graduates, their families and members of the university community gathered in McDonough Arena Sunday morning for the Baccalaureate Eucharistic Celebration, where the message focused on the love of God.

“Tuck this away in your memory,” said the Rev. James Walsh, S.J. “When things get tough, remember the command is a promise. What we can’t do on our own, God will supply.”
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The Sunday Mass celebration will move from Healy Lawn at 9 a.m. this morning to McDonough Arena (gym).

The commencement ceremonies for the School of Nursing and Health Studies will now take place at 6 p.m. inside Gaston Hall.

The rain site location, McDonough Arena, will be used for today’s 12p.m. McDonough School of Business Commencement Ceremony.

At a send-off ceremony that marked both the culmination of one journey and the beginning of another, the Center for Social Justice Research, Teaching and Service (CSJ) saluted the many 2009 graduates who plan to continue working on issues of social justice after graduation.

Graduate after graduate walked across the stage as CSJ staff announced the organizations where they plan to serve.  The list included Teach for America, Jesuit Volunteer Corps, City Year, D.C. Teaching Fellows, Peace Corps and many others.
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You can watch Georgetown’s commencement actvities live throughout the weekend via campus cable television.  Healy Lawn commencement ceremonies will be broadcast live on campus cable channel 3.  Gaston Hall ceremonies will be broadcast on campus cable channel 11 and events in McDonough Arena will be broadcast on channel 18.

The guest speaker of the 91st annual commissioning ceremony of the Georgetown University Army ROTC was a man who had gone through the same ROTC ceremony at Gaston Hall 39 years earlier: Gen. George Casey Jr., chief of staff of the U.S. Army and a 1970 graduate of the Walsh School of Foreign Service.

“In just a few minutes, you’ll be our Army’s newest second lieutenants,” Casey told the 26 cadets Friday, as an audience of a few hundred family members and friends looked on. “It will be leaders like you who will lead this country to victory and through our greatest, most difficult challenges yet. I’m proud of you because you epitomize what is best about the United States of America.”

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