A new wave of alumni were handed their diplomas at Sunday’s commencement ceremony on Knox College’s campus.
Graduates sat out in rows on the south lawn of Old Main for the ceremony where the commencement speaker this year had sat just 16 years previous.
Vir Das was an alumni of the college, where he majored in economics and theater. Since then he’s become one of Bollywood’s biggest English-speaking comedians, as well as one of the country’s top actors, writers, musicians, and festival producers.
He was featured in the New York Times in 2011 as one of a new set of emerging comedians in India.
Das gave advise to the seniors, telling them to be stupid.
He credits his comedic career to a single stupid decision he made while at Knox. He said one late night he got the urge to put on a comedy show and printed up 100 fliers and plastered them all over campus.
“I hadn’t written one joke yet, but the poster was up, which meant I had to come through,” said Das to the graduating class. “I gave myself a month-and-a-half and I wrote 90 minutes of what barely qualified as jokes and the first time I ever did stand up was at Kresge [Recital Hall] over there for 500 of my friends and from that day on wards I was a comedian.”
In between the jokes he told he had a few inspiring words for the graduates, calling them “intellectual beasts”
“So five months from now when you are getting coffee or filing papers in a ‘beastly’ manner – like a savage – for some old person who makes you look at pictures of their kids, and wondering why you majored in Southeast Asian Feminist Literature… I want you to remember that you have three things we do not: you have knowledge, you have promise, and you have cartilage,” he joked.
Das was the first alumnus to serve as Commencement speaker since John Podesta (’71) in 1998, and first international alumnus since Ismat Kittani (’51) in 1982.
Other than the wind it was a perfect day on Sunday.
