Editor’s note: This piece was delivered as a speech at the convocation opening SUNY Oneonta’s fall semester on Aug. 23.
At a time when headlines often paint college as a one-way street of knowledge, experience and benefit, I offer a different picture. In Oneonta and across our region, higher education is a public good that ripples inward and outward. Belonging takes practice: inviting, listening, revising traditions so more voices can sing in them, and restoring our faith that good work done together still matters. When students carry that practice beyond campus to small businesses, schools, clinics and town halls, they knit stronger neighborhoods.
It looks like students leaving a study group to volunteer at a Saturday soup kitchen; a nursing major piloting a fall-prevention workshop at a senior center; a commuter student organizing a rideshare so classmates can get to campus jobs; a computer science team sketching a simple dashboard to help local employers post internships and for students to find them. Belonging is not sentimentality; it is infrastructure: peer mentoring circles, commuter lounges, tutoring, faculty office hours, cultural events that invite us to learn more, and the courage to ask, “Want to sit with us?” or “May I sit with you?” When we widen our circle, everyone wins.
Neighbors meet new collaborators. Small businesses meet reliable interns and future hires. Students practice citizenship as well as scholarship. We rediscover what a public college is for: not sorting the “worthy” from the rest, but cultivating capacity, character, and community. If you are reading this as a parent, relative, guardian, neighbor, alum or city leader, you have a role: cheer, listen, hire, partner, mentor, open doors. Help us make the path from these pillars to your porch a shared one.
In a short while, you’ll pass through the pillars, stepping between two stone markers that symbolize your entry into SUNY Oneonta. But the pillars are only a threshold; the real architecture of belonging is constructed through the choices we make together every day.
I teach a framework called the Togetherness Wayfinder — a map with three interlocking principles:
1. Relationality — we become ourselves through connection with each other.
2. Critical engagement — we question everything, especially our most sincerely held beliefs about ourselves and other people.
3. Liberation through creativity — we imagine and build better futures for all of us.
Allow me to offer one touchstone from each principle that connects with your journey ahead.
First, relationality: I am because we are. College often gets sold as an individual quest: GPAs, résumés, credentials and graduation. But the human story — our human story — is necessarily communal. Greet the person next to you. Join a club that teaches you something new about the world. The friendships you forge will outlast any transcript, and they will teach you how expansive the words “we” and “I” can be.
Second, critical engagement: Learning to belong. Belonging is not passive comfort; it is an active practice of widening the circle. In my classes, we interrogate concepts and practices related to identity. Here on campus, challenge a rule that excludes others, re-imagine a tradition so more voices can sing in it, remember that you cannot know a person until you know them.
Third, liberation through creativity: Making home together. When you feel lost or alone — and you will — remember creativity is a prerequisite for liberation. Write a poem, code an app, organize a service project. Every act of creation plants a flag that says, “I belong here, and so do you.” The greatest gift you bring to Oneonta is not conformity but the unique cadence of your imagination woven into our collective song.
Class of 2029, belonging is not a reward bestowed; it is a practice you enact. Carry this compass of togetherness: relate deeply, question bravely, create boldly.