"I survey my fellow graduates, and I do not doubt that we will all excel above all others," Stetsko said. "But, now, now, I look out and realize that none of you can understand a single word I say."

Class Marshal Justin M. Krebs '00 gave a humorous speech for his Senior English Address on the meaning of handshakes. Krebs said he believes graduates should go beyond the simple gesture to embrace life more closely.

"Celebrate life not by a series of handshakes but by embracing it as if you would want it to embrace you," he said.

He joked that his Harvard experience had been a series of handshakes with others, all connected by the greeting by Rudenstine to students in their first year at Annenberg dining hall.

"Through his hand we have symbolically touched every hand at this University," Krebs said.

Dr.Arese U. Carrington, a graduating student from the School of Public Health, inspired the crowd with her call for students to "defend the defenseless" in her Graduate English Address. Carrington's family was divided during civil war in her native country of Nigeria, leaving her and her mother to care for Carrington's younger siblings for nine months.

As is quickly becoming tradition, students from the graduate schools waved items symbolic of their degrees when Rudenstine addressed them.