This, Sir, Is My Case!
By Rembert Browne, The Dartmouth Staff
Published on Friday, May 29, 2009
Rembert’s Valedictorian Speech, June 14, 2009
[Rembert – REMEMBER YOUR MANTRA:
You are a golden god
You are a golden god
You are a golden god] [Stand up straight. Don’t forget to look up. And before you say something funny, look at your mother.]
• John the Baptist once said “Vox Clamantis in Deserto.”
So did Eleazar Wheelock.
• Daniel Webster once closed a speech with “Et tu quoque, mi fili.”
We appreciate it. We really do.
• John Ledyard once called himself “a phenomenon.”
That guy probably had NO friends.
• Nelson Rockerfeller once told Ernest Martin Hopkins, “I came to Dartmouth because of you.”
I threw rock when I should have thrown scissors. Oh Colby-Sawyer, what could have been...
• John Sloan Dickey once said, There is no more vulnerable human combination than an undergraduate”
I see that statement, and raise him: “There is no more vulnerable human combination than an undergraduate senior Black male from Atlanta, Georgia at the Rockapellas senior show.”
• James Wright never actually said that he’d “end the Greek system as we know it.”
Oh The D, you silly kids with your selective hearing.
• Jim Kim thinks he can help “take Dartmouth to a higher place.”
He better, or Susan, Jim, and I are gonna Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego on you (I don’t really know what that means, but I’ve always thought of them as my Biblical Three Ninjas)
• Because of Dartmouth’s harsh SEMP policies in the 1920s, Theodore Geisel became “Dr. Seuss.”
Hey Officer Willie, check your Blitz. It’s a list of everything bad I’ve done and plan on doing. I need this.
• Susan Wright once referred to me as “Rempert” in a blitz
I honestly considered changing my name, it sounded so beautiful. And it was over Blitz.
• Officer David Hunt told me last year, “I’ve never had a basket, tassels and horn on my bike.”
I didn’t believe you then, and I don’t believe you now. I’m still awake, you know, during your 5 a.m. Tuesday morning shift...
• And finally, a man in Collis once said, in reference to sausage breakfast sandwiches, “Why get one, when you could get two.”
Ray, you got me every time.
That’s all I got, Dartmouth. I’m spent. Thanks for listening.
I love you, mom.
[Wave to the fam, fist pump to the crowd and then do the worm on stage. Then get up, look at your family, apologize to them, then go sit down.]