Army Special Operations leader offers challenges to University of Idaho grads

Hundreds of University of Idaho students made their final walk as undergraduates through the heart of the Moscow campus Saturday morning for the university’s 121st commencement ceremony at the Kibbie Dome.

The students, accompanied by a few hundred UI graduate students, walked down University Avenue past those same buildings where their trek to a higher education started some four or five years ago.

Parents posted up like paparazzi, hiding in the nooks and crannies of the campus and its buildings to capture the momentous occasion.

Spokane resident Susan Hogan, camera in hand, waited anxiously for her two graduating children – Monte McKinnon and Chet McKinnon – to make their way into the Kibbie Dome.

“They put themselves through school,” Hogan said. “I’m excited for them. They have a great life ahead of them. They’ve really applied themselves and they picked this school for the engineering college.”

Roger Dunkle said he drove down from Colville, Washington, to watch his son Chad Dunkle graduate with a master’s from UI’s engineering school.

“He’s the first one in our immediate family to get any degree, much less a master’s degree – it’s a pretty cool story,” Dunkle said.

Samantha Wright stood in the back of the line of graduates for the College Of Agricultural and Life Sciences, waiting to storm campus as an undergrad for the last time. Wright said it’s her friends and the teachers she will miss most.

She said she’s moving to Boise where she has a job lined up working as a research agronomist for Simplot. She said she will be working on Simplot’s new GMO potato.

Dalton O’Neill, an architecture graduate, said he plans to return to the UI to follow an accelerated path to a master’s. O’Neill said he would have considered other colleges but the accelerated path he’s looking to start isn’t offered everywhere.

He said this summer he will work as an intern for a company in Beijing, and he hopes to find a permanent position with the company after attaining his master’s.

“The ultimate goal is working at an international firm designing buildings anywhere in the world,” O’Neill said.

Brig. Gen. Erik Peterson, commander of the U.S. Army Special Operations Aviation Command, offered a few challenges to the UI class of 2016 during the main ceremony.

“I’m not going to offer you a lengthy formula or list for success, for every person’s journey is as different as their personalities, strengths and weaknesses, determination and resilience, the trials they’ll face and the opportunities they’ll be afforded,” Peterson said. “Rather, I’d like to offer you a couple of challenges.”

Peterson told the graduating class they may not realize it, but they are part of the world’s elite, noting only 8 percent of the world’s 7.4 billion humans have a bachelor’s degree, and just 3 percent have a master’s degree.

“At the other end of the spectrum, an incredible and disappointing 17 percent of your fellow world citizens are completely illiterate,” Peterson said. “Over 15 percent are exceptionally malnourished and a similar proportion lack access to safe drinking water. Nearly 10 percent live in absolute abject poverty on less than $2 a day. Nearly 8 percent, roughly 60 million, unprecedented in recent decades, are refugees displaced by insecurity, conflict and violence. You, on the other hand, in addition to your academic accomplishment, have studied in growth with relative peace and security, with access to shelter, services and fulfillment of most, if not all, of your basic human needs.”

Peterson made clear he wasn’t trying to throw more numbers at the grads.

“I share this simple stratification not to simply add to the years of facts and figures you are currently trying to flush, rather to provide context and remind you just where you stand,” he said.

Peterson said during his 30-year career as a soldier he dealt with friends and foes around the world and found nothing compares to displaying kindness to his fellow man.

He encouraged the grads to give back and be kind, reciting a quote from Theodore Roosevelt’s 1905 inaugural address: “Much has been given us, and much will rightfully be expected from us. We have duties to others and duties to ourselves, and we can shirk neither.”

“And when you hesitate or inevitably ponder the easier disengaged, uninvolved path, please consider this question: If not you, the world’s educated elite, those who benefit from relative prosperity and security, free in person, speech and idea, then who?” Peterson asked. “Make it a habit. Make it a lifestyle, not just a single act. You will make a difference.”