Reprinted with permission of the Times Union, Albany, N.Y.

By Mike Fricano
Staff writer, Times Union

At a ceremony that combined cheers, memories and beach balls, more than 2,400 University at Albany seniors joined the real world Sunday during the college's 156th commencement.

More than 11,000 family members packed Pepsi Arena to congratulate the 2,472 graduates. Sunday's featured speaker was John Delano, a professor in the department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences who is working with NASA on researching the origins of life.

During his address, Delano mixed humor with a slide show and overcame several interruptions to impart five core values: humility, honesty, humor, persistence and leadership.

"Even our best ideas will always be incomplete,'' said Delano, who was frequently drowned out by the boisterous beach-ball batting throughout the cheering crowd. Much to the chagrin of the graduates, strategically placed blue-gowned event hosts snagged most beach balls after a few bats around the crowd.

Delano took it all in stride, smiling during the brief pauses in his speech, and eventually continued.

"Half of what you have been taught is probably wrong,'' he said to a round of applause. "The problem is that we don't know which half yet.''

The frequently cheering and constantly buzzing rows of students were hushed when their student body president, David Bender, took the podium.

Bender led them down memory lane with his words and slide show, which unfolded to the "Friends'' theme song. From watching his classmates study and sleep in the library to walking to class in subzero temperatures, Bender looked back on almost everything with fondness.

"Your diploma is not primarily about the letters on your transcript,'' Bender said. "Let it be assured we will reflect in some way on our University at Albany experience.''

Throughout all of his experiences, though, Bender said that it was the people who made the biggest impression.

"We learned that sometimes our friends were our best teachers,'' said Bender, drawing nods from the faculty onlookers.

After his speech, Bender and the senior class bestowed their gift on the university, an $18,500 check to establish a need-based scholarship.

Before the ceremony, anxious, beaming parents competed with each other's yells to get the attention of their sons and daughters as they filed into the arena. One dad had to be escorted off the floor after he had sneaked through a railing in search of a better camera angle.

"What they don't understand is, if I am nice to one of them, then I have to let them all do that,'' said a security guard.

After the ceremony, Pearl Street was mobbed, closed to traffic and filled with camera-popping parents and group-hugging graduates.

Mark Jenco, 22, was busy basking with friend Roberto Williams amid the smiling crowd in front of the Pepsi Arena.

"It was just amazing,'' he said. "It's a totally free day. No inhibitions.''

Jenco, a Jamestown native, graduated with a religious studies degree and is off to India and Nepal to study Buddhism in a monastery. Although his major is obscure, it came in handy Sunday morning as he took the Buddhist teachings of patience and discipline to make it through the one-hour, 45-minute ceremony.

"It gives me serenity when I need it,'' he said.

Jenco and Williams congratulated their friend Sophia Pasquis, bound for graduate film school at Florida State University next fall.

Williams' cinematic ambitions are more subdued. He is going back home to Albion, Orleans County, to try to become an independent filmmaker.

The English major described Sunday's ceremonies as filled with good and bad moments, but reflected positively on his time in Albany.

"I loved it,'' he said.