MIT taught her well. That is why Megha Vemuri could speak for others
Barring her from the graduation ceremony, MIT acted against the values that students are expected to learn in such hallowed campuses, including compassion for others
Megha Vemuri’s four-minute speech praised student protests, highlighted the devastation in Gaza, and urged MIT to cut ties with Israeli institutions. (Photo: X) Like many students around the United States, those studying at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are proud bearers of the American tradition of the class ring. Redesigned every year, these signet-style rings bear the insignia of the school: At MIT, it is a beaver, nicknamed the “the brass rat”, that is engraved on the flat top, with one side of the bezel featuring a rendition of the Boston skyline and the other side, a view of the Cambridge — specifically the university campus — skyline. Before they graduate, MIT students wear the ring in a way that the beaver and the Boston side of the bezel face them. At their commencement, the new graduates are asked to “flip the brass rat” — with the beaver now facing away from them, symbolising their entry into the wider world, and the campus skyline, which now faces the students, reminding them of the legacy, and its accompanying responsibilities, that they bear.
At the commencement ceremony for the Class of 2025 on Thursday, yet another cohort of MIT students flipped the brass rat and prepared to step into the rest of their lives, carrying with them both knowledge and a sense of their history, forever intertwined with the history of their alma mater, that binds them as a community. In the now-viral speech delivered by Megha Vemuri, the president of the Class of 2025, she refers to this precious load when she speaks to her fellow graduates about the “privilege of access…to a place like this (MIT)” and the “immeasurable responsibility” they enter the world with. Remove the references to the ongoing destruction of Gaza, the suffering of the Palestinians and the silence or complicity of institutions like the one she is graduating from, Vemuri’s address is no different from those delivered at commencement and graduation ceremonies at other schools, across the US and in other countries, at other times. In their four years of undergraduate studies, MIT’s students, like students elsewhere, have only been learning about and preparing for their responsibilities in the world beyond the campus walls. They must now, Vemuri says, actually take on the burden.
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