Guilford College’s 2022 graduating class saw so much change and upheaval for most of their four years at the College that one last wrinkle on Commencement Day wasn’t about to faze them.

So when Mandy Cohen, the former Secretary of the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services, informed the College on Friday that she would be unable to speak at Commencement after testing positive, with mild symptoms, for COVID-19, the 200-plus graduates took it in stride.

Ananya Bernardo ’22, speaker for the graduating class, called the pandemic “a singular moment that will define and guide our choices going forward.” She praised her classmates for their commitment and perseverance over the past four years of faculty and leadership changes, masks, meals in dorm rooms and online learning.

“These challenges brought discovery that forced us to rise together as a community,” said Ananya, who herself tested positive three times in the past three years. “Every day at Guilford I’ve witnessed our class encourage and cheer each other on, especially when things got hard at the beginning of the pandemic.

“All our dreams, plans, and hopes were instantaneously diverted. For a brief moment, our lights dimmed. Momentarily we had no direction. We faced a singular moment that will define and guide our choices going forward. Then, we realized Guilford had prepared us for this precise moment. And, this is why we serendipitously are all gathered here today.”

Ananya earned a bachelor’s degree in Sociology and Anthropology with minors in Spanish and Printmaking. She was a four-year Bonner Scholar and a Multicultural Leadership Scholar.

Saturday’s 90-minute Commencement ceremony, attended by about 1,500 people, was the first in-person for Guilford since 2019. The pandemic forced the last two ceremonies online. In keeping with the unofficial theme of change and upheaval, a morning rain caused the College to move the ceremony, traditionally held on Founders Quadrangle, indoors to Ragan-Brown Field House for the first time since 2007.

Kyle Farmbry, four months into his presidency, in his welcoming remarks thanked the parents and guardians of his first graduating class for entrusting them to the College for four years. “You have encouraged them to be with us. We have learned alongside them,” he said. “You have certainly been patient with us as we have gone through some turbulent times. You also believed that regardless of the situations we have experienced — a global pandemic, masks or no masks, social distancing, programmatic and administrative changes at Guilford — that enough people at Guilford really cared deeply for the well-being of your student. And for that we offer the deepest and most heartfelt thank you.”

Ananya said it would be easy to start life after Guilford by staying in bed a day or two or three and recuperating from the last four years. 

“Get up anyway,” she said. “Find the spark within you that propels you to make a difference. We only need to take one step to get started, so start somewhere. Wherever your path may lead you, make sure to fill up your soul and warm your heart. Remember to play. Have fun … dance, paint, sing, play, volunteer.”

Kizzy Lea ‘06, Chief Financial Officer at Forsyth Technical Community College in nearby Winston-Salem, and a member of the Alumni Engagement Council, in remarks closing the ceremony, encouraged the graduates to face life’s challenges head on, rather than work around them. 

“Every accomplishment you achieve is added to the world’s accomplishments,” she said. “Your individual successes benefit society, because when you succeed, you lighten the burden of others. When you succeed, you are able to give rather than take.”

In addition to offering remarks to the graduates, former Secretary Cohen was to receive an honorary degree from the College in recognition of her public health leadership in the state and nationally during the COVID-19 pandemic. The presentation will be made at a later date.

The ceremony included the College tradition of bagpipers leading the processional, an invocation by Wess Daniels, William R. Rogers Director of Friends Center and Quaker Studies, and musical selections by the Guilford College Jazz Ensemble and Guilford College Choir.