As fireworks popped behind Fenway Park, 4,200 of Northeastern University’s newest alumni turned to see 24,000 of their closest friends and family cheer raucously in celebration of their accomplishments.
The adoring fans who filled the stadium—rooting not for the Red Sox, but for the Huskies—held up giant cards that together spelled out “CONGRATS NU 2022,” sending Northeastern’s newly minted graduates into the world with an appropriately huge celebration.
The university’s 120th Commencement exercises, held on May 13, was the second at Boston’s iconic Fenway Park. It was a daylong affair, with a ceremony for graduate students in the morning and another for undergraduate students in the evening. Both celebrations marked the final chapter in a story filled with unexpected twists, challenging plot points, and heroic achievements by the Class of 2022.
“During your years at Northeastern, you experienced a global pandemic. You lived through—and led—an important racial reckoning that forced all of us to listen, learn, and act. Today, we see a brutal war taking place in real-time. Around the clock, we are bearing witness to all of the aggression and atrocity that wars bring. We are also reminded that freedom, democracy, and self-determination are precious and worth fighting for,” Joseph E. Aoun, president of Northeastern, told undergraduates during his address. “What gives me hope, throughout these challenges, is you. All of you, with your Northeastern experiences, ready to shape the future. To make it better. More peaceful. More sustainable. More just.”
Northeastern’s newest graduates shared that mission with Hamdi Ulukaya, founder and chief executive of Chobani, who delivered Friday’s undergraduate Commencement address.
Ulukaya—who walked to the podium to chants of “Hamdi! Hamdi! Hamdi!” from students in the crowd—immigrated to the United States from eastern Turkey in 1994 with $3,000 to his name. But he soon transformed an abandoned New York yogurt factory into the home of the bestselling Greek yogurt in the country.
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Photo by Billie Weiss/Northeastern University.
