Commencement Address

Sunday, May 25, 2025
by Torrey Maldonado ’96

VASSAR FAMILY!!!

So can you believe that my head is so big that Vassar had to order me two graduation caps to wear? When I was littler, my sisters would call me “Big Head.” One of them is here right now. So I guess my needing two caps proves that I have a big head, right?

Vassar family, we are here! And you’re family if you help a Vassar graduate rise!

Let’s first give a round of applause to President Bradley. Please clap for the Board of Trustees. If we can clap for members of the Vassar College faculty. And if you can clap extra loud for the proud parents, caregivers, and guardians, and family that are here today. But now, let’s clap for the rising stars that all of us orbit around in this moment. Let’s clap for the graduates!

So thank you to everyone who’s invited me here.

This is the time where so many of us feel as if “we did it” and graduates, you did do it. So clap for yourselves. You did it.

Now, we’ve heard, and you probably could end the sentence, “it takes a village to raise a child.” Marian Wright Edelman came up with that phrase, that it takes a village to raise a child, and we’ve come this far with the help of those who surround us. So let’s give them thanks. I want you to look around—who in this audience, graduates, helped you rise? Who showed you love, who had your backs? Was it your friends? Point to them right now. Give them their flowers. Was it faculty? Point to them, give them their roses. Was it family? Where’s your family? Point to the family that helped you rise. And they’re pointing back at you, I see.

Many of us are imagining our futures, and many of us here, we can’t imagine what the future holds. Whatever your future holds, know this: You are your ancestors’ wildest dreams. And in the future, you still will be your ancestors wildest dreams. That attitude is very valuable for you to have as you graduate and move forth.

I want to share a story with you, and in it are some more valuable attitudes and things that are gonna help you rise and keep you being your ancestors’ wildest dreams. And this story will also help you rise into futures you cannot imagine. I didn’t imagine that I would graduate Vassar. I didn’t imagine that right there where those bleachers are, I would be married on that hill. And I never imagined that I would stand here on this side, at this podium.

I want us to use our imaginations and rewind our minds to the first day of moving into dorms as a first-year student. Imagine me—first-year me—and my mom helping me move into the first floor of Raymond house. Raymond in the house without a doubt! My mom’s name is Carmen Lilly Negron. She’s affectionately known as Miss Carmen, she’s known as Miss Lilly, Connie, Cupcake. Now, my mom, she had this warm energy that was this big. It went all the way out. But she was this short. She was up to my chest. I was a gentle giant, so picture tall me, moving my large items into Raymond. Small her, carrying tiny things. And you know how on moving days, you’re doing your thing, but you’re watching your neighbors do their thing, too? This young woman next door to me, she thanks her two parents for the computer they just bought her. Out in the front parking lot, two parents handed keys to their son. That kept happening everywhere. Everybody seemed to get cool gifts. My mom, she couldn’t afford a laptop. She couldn’t afford a car. She was a single mom. Shoutout to the single parents here! Single caregivers. And we also were on welfare. So we’re moving in, and we’re almost done. She disappears, and she reappears with this huge black garbage bag. Now, the funny thing is, the garbage bag was almost as tall as my mom, and she had something in it. So I smiled at her, and I said, “Ma, that’s a gift?” And she nodded. “This is for you.” So my mind goes wild. Did she get my Brooklyn neighborhood to pitch in money to buy me a gift? Maybe they got me a computer. Ma interrupts me wondering. “You’re gonna need this.” Wait. So I’ve starting my Vassar journey academically and socially. She says she has something I need. It has to be a computer, right? It has to be something that’s gonna help me excel. She reaches in the back and she pulls out a baseball bat.

Now, before I continue, I never played baseball. And I wasn’t playing at Vassar. So my mom, she sees my confusion, and she tells me, “If anyone comes in through your window, hit them.” And now you’re laughing, and I was laughing. But I was laughing because my mom was so short that as she’s trying to motion “hit them” with the bat, she could barely lift the bat. Now, this is Vassar. We need a bat under our bed, right? My mom, she kept speaking in that moment, she says, “Torrey, I know what college is like. Older kids like to beat up on the freshmen.”

I have a question for you: In your first year, did anybody ever pull you out of your room and try to beat you up? But your parents here, your caregivers, gave you a back, right? No? Where I’m from, it’s rare if a kid goes to college. I’m the first person in my family to go to college. LIFE magazine called my public housing project one of the 10 worst neighborhoods—and they did too much; they should have said one of the 10 worst neighborhoods in Brooklyn, right? Or in New York. They said that we were one of the 10 worst neighborhoods in the United States. So where I’m from, where we’re from, what we know about college is through media. So, Ma, she didn’t really know what to expect from us, from Vassar students, and talk about expecting things: I did not expect my mom to hand me a bat.

And here’s why, circling back, she had that warm energy. My mom, she was sort of my Star Wars Yoda. Not just ’cause she was short. She would tell me quotes that sounded like Yoda was speaking. Now, how many of you could do the Yoda accent? I might have to get you up here. I can’t really do it, but you know, Yoda’s “do or do not do?” And if you know that one, “there is no try.” That was my mom’s “good, better, best, never let it rest until your good gets better, and your better gets best.” She made me memorize that as a tween. Both are very valuable attitudes for you to have as you graduate. Let’s talk about Yoda again. What about “wars not make one great?” Or “a Jedi uses force for knowledge, never for attack?” That was my mom’s telling me by the age of 10 that education is a weapon. Education has power. Both are valuable attitudes as you graduate. Yoda’s “in a dark place, a little more knowledge lights our way.” That’s Ma telling me Maya Angelou’s quote “Be a rainbow in someone else’s cloud.” That’s another valuable attitude as we go into our futures. Yoda said, “Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.” That’s my mom urging me to be with people who light me up.

So back to my confusion. How could my gentle Yoda, my mom, hand me a bat? Wasn’t this the same mom who would stop males and females in the neighborhood from fighting? Or arguing? This was the same mother who praised Dr. King Jr in high school, and my sister knows this story, I wanted to get an earring. And my mom asked me, “Did Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. have an earring? No, so you can’t get one, Torrey.” So it was really unlike her to give me a bat.

Sometimes when people act unlike you expect, we don’t know what to do. We ask ourselves, what will we do? So I want to share another Star Wars reference. How many of you know The Mandalorian? Woo hoo! I like that show ’cause it rhymes with my last name. You see it? The Mandalorian-ado. “This is the way.” So what is the way to go when people act unlike you expect?

Here’s what I did. I chose to follow two other sayings from my mother. My mom taught me, “Listen to what a person does, not their words. Listen to how they act, not what they say.” And also, “actions speak louder than words.” Two other valuable outlooks to use in your futures.

So when Ma gave me a bat, I told her, “Ma, thanks. I’ll use it.” And I listened to what she did my whole life, not what she said in that moment in that Raymond dorm. I took her bat, and that night, as she was going back to New York City, I put the bat under my bed.

In my first months, the bat was completely useless. Instead of hostility, I was met with the Hallmark openness and friendliness and niceness of vast students. And also of the alums I’ve met. Trust me, in your future, when you mention that you’re a Vassar alum, it’s better than if you told somebody your Hogwarts house, or your zodiac sign. The Vassar name is going to open so many doors for you.

So back to the bat. Weeks went by, and the bat was collecting dust under my bed. My mom visited campus, and she noticed that the bat wasn’t out, and she asked about it, and I pointed to it, and she saw it was collecting dust. But she noticed something else during her visit at Vassar. She noticed that every single student she met, even students who didn’t like me, were friendly and were nice to me. And my mom started to drop her suspicion, and she felt that here at Vassar, I was at home away from home, that I was safe.

So more time passes, and instead of using the bat, I opened my heart, and I used my open hand, and I got involved in activities that a lot of you have gotten involved in. Any activity that would help people rise. And there’s a saying, you probably know it, that you can’t keep a man down without staying down with him. Booker T. Washington came up with that. I learned the converse is true: If you help a person rise, you rise. And that’s a theme of one of the books that I wrote, Hands. It’s a Global Read Aloud winner, and I figured that I had to teach young people the message that the power and how many of you agree with this, the power isn’t in knocking somebody down or keeping somebody out, but the power is in lifting people up. Anybody agree with that?

So, my mom, Miss Carmen, Miss Lilly, Miss Negron, Connie, Cupcake—she had hoped that I would be around people who would light me up, and after my first few months at Vassar, and with activities that were lighting me up, that bat kept disappearing into the darkest corners of my room. During one visit, my mom asked me about the bat. She said, “Do you still have that bat?” And I told her, “It’s buried somewhere in the closet.” And she started laughing. She said, “Yeah, you never needed it.” And we both laughed.

And of course, there were fights to fight at Vassar. There were fights beyond Vassar, too. There are fights even today. When I think of those fights, I think of something my mom told me, and it helped me write an article for the Vasar Spectator. She held up a pen, and she said, and you might be able to finish it, “the pen is mightier than…” You know it. You must know my mom.

For 30 years, the pen, words, education, have been my weapons. As both the teacher and a published author, I’ve been reminded that the power is not in wielding a bat or any weapon of crass destruction. But the power is in wielding weapons of mass instruction—stories, words, connectivity.” And I’m lucky to be in both fields because I work in more than just human education. If you’re in human education, you work with human transformation. As a poor boy, I thought the whole world was my block. I thought it was my zip code. Education changed that. I’m proof that a life can be rewritten, that education can transform. You, graduates, are proof that a Vassar education can transform.

It’s my point right now to point to something. Everybody, look in the back, graduates, you’re going to be receiving a weapon that you need. Everybody is going to be receiving a baseball bat. I’m joking. No, I do want to point to your weapon, though. Your weapon is your gift. It’s whatever helped you rise to get to Vassar. Your weapon is whatever made you feel luminous at Vassar, whatever lights you up and lights other people up. It could be writing, it could be dance. It could be any career that’s aligned with your interests and passions. What lights you up? Ask yourself that throughout your life, what lights you up, who lights you up? Because that lights our world up. And as you share your gifts, you’re going to make other people aware of their weapons, of their gifts. As you help others rise, it’s going to help all of us rise. It’ll help you rise. I’ll keep you being your ancestors’ wildest dreams, and it’ll help step you into futures you can’t imagine, like me, standing here before you on this podium. At the beginning I asked you, please point to somebody who helped you rise. In the future, be that somebody. Be someone who people point to and say, “she, he, they helped me rise.”

This is my time to say congratulations, graduates. Now, let’s go forth, and let’s rise. You rise, she rises, they rise, let’s all rise together. Thank you.