College presidents usually tell graduates to chase their dreams, follow their passions, change the world. But on a soft Saturday morning at Guilford College, President Jean Bordewich offered something plainer, older and perhaps harder in a country that lately feels cracked at the seams: Build community. Stay in the conversation. Do right.

Before Jean sat 237 undergraduate and graduate students – many of whom arrived during a pandemic, endured the College’s financial instability, and would soon receive degrees along with the uneasy inheritance of modern America, a place Jean described as both fractured and full of hope and opportunity, and well worth believing in.

“Each of you will write your own life story,” said Jean, who is a year and a half into her presidency. “We are living through an era when society sometimes feels fractured, polarized, angry, isolating, exhausting. But it’s not the first time. There are many ways forward – and you can lead. Find the promise, find the opportunities, take them up with excitement and energy and joy.

Jean returned again and again to the idea that the country’s divisions demand engagement, not retreat. “Don’t shy away from politics and government,” she said. “Voting is like breathing. Healthy debate over differences exercises the muscle. And hashing out compromises – over and over – is essential to growth.”

Martha Jones, Guilford’s featured speaker and a History professor and founder of the “Hard Histories” project at Johns Hopkins University, continued Jean’s theme of civic responsibility by urging graduates not to retreat from the uncomfortable truths of American history, but to confront them with curiosity and courage.

Couldn't make it to Commencement? Check out some of our favorite images

Martha, who received an honorary doctoral degree in Humanities from the College, drew from her years teaching students attending the Baltimore School for the Arts. She recalled being challenged by a student who had just discovered the story of George Hackett, a free Black man who fought racism and discrimination in 19th-century Baltimore.

“Professor,” the student asked her, “why have you kept this history from us for so long?”

The question, Martha said, reshaped her understanding of education and the role of history itself. Too often, she told graduates, adults attempt to shield young people from the nation’s hardest chapters out of fear they will become discouraged or cynical. Instead, she discovered, students wanted honesty.

“Rather than being afraid of the past, my students were fascinated by it,” Martha said. “Rather than being unsettled by hard history, they felt informed by it.”

She urged graduates to use the critical thinking skills they developed at Guilford to continue asking difficult questions about history, democracy and justice.

“History and this country that holds so much of our shared past needs you,” she said. “Your courage and your willingness to ask the hard questions, your willingness to face the hard past, and your commitment to making for all of us a better future.”

Graduates also heard from classmate Jahmarley Vivens '26, a Business Administration graduate from Miami, who said the defining lesson of their four years at Guilford was not achievement but learning how to adapt together through uncertainty, hardship and change. “We are not graduating because college was easy,” he said. “We are graduating because we learned how to move forward when it was hard.”

Before degrees were conferred, the College paused to honor three people whose lives, in very different ways, had become stitched into the fabric of service and quiet perseverance: students August Hutchins ’26 and Alba Argueta Garcia ’26, along with alumna Esther Hall ’74, each receiving the Algernon Sydney Sullivan Award, a century-old honor reserved for those who move through the world with uncommon generosity, humility, leadership and care for others.

August, who lives in Silver Spring, Md., is a double major in Community & Justice Studies and Anthropology/Sociology. Alba, who lives in Winston-Salem, is a triple major in Education Studies, Business and Accounting. She’ll wrap up her MBA at Guilford in August.

Esther, a former College trustee, lives in Raleigh, is a longtime supporter of the College. She is involved heavily in Alumni & Friends of Guilford (AFOG), an independent alumni organization, and leads volunteers with the Guilford Admissions Ambassadors Network (GAAN).

After the ceremony, students mingled in Guilford’s Quad with family and friends, eager to capture the moment with photos and hugs.

Visit Guilford’s YouTube channel to rewatch the ceremony and follow Guilford on Facebook and Instagram for more highlights and photos.