Each year, Ripon's Commencement is focused on a theme. This year's theme is "Conservation, Adaptation & Sustainability."

Our planet is a finite resource. We live on it and we live off it.  We have known this for a long time, but we have not always fully realized or confronted the consequences either locally or globally of the human impact on the environment.  This impact is a pressing concern. For this reason, Commencement 2008 at Ripon College will focus on the themes of conservation, adaptation, and sustainability. 

Conservation efforts, broadly speaking, attempt to preserve and retain parts of our planet – rain forests, wetlands, prairies, waters, etc – as they are and to protect them.  We often think about conservation as focused on large-scale or global resources of common or universal benefit, though smaller-scale and local efforts are also significant. 

Adaptation would include work to transform an already changed landscaped into something environmentally beneficial and more fitting for our shared use.  In an urban setting, adaptation could comprise the replacement of concrete with greenery and of pavement with parks and playgrounds.

Sustainability, of course, is a goal that may be as desirable as it is elusive: how can we nourish ourselves without starving our planet, giving and taking, mutually respecting each other in a way that sustains the environment for our life and our life in the environment?

These are some of the harder questions of our times. It is therefore fitting that we address them at a moment that celebrates the accomplishments of our students, joins our entire community together, and inaugurates the next phase in our graduates’ lives, sending them into a future that they will have a large part in making.