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THE HOYA
friday, MAY 18, 2018
Class of 2022 Marks Highest Yield in Recent Memory YIELD, from A1 admits until we see where we are in the middle part of June at which point we may be able to offer a few more transfer admits.” Twenty-three students have already requested to defer enrollment, and based on yield rates in previous years, Deacon said the university anticipates around 30 students in total will take a gap year. Deacon anticipates the Class of 2022 will ultimately reach its target enrollment size through the process of attrition. “Historically, about 45 to 50 students will ultimately withdraw from their deposit either getting off a waiting list elsewhere or some personal circumstances,” Deacon said. “We’re only in the beginning of that process so we’re hoping that happens — normally we hate to see that happen — our best guess is it might bring us back to around 1,620.” Deacon said this year’s applicants had substantially
higher test scores than previous classes, with the incoming average SAT scores increasing about 30 points from last year’s average of 1411. “The average student admitted was about a 1460 on the SAT, and the average coming in is about 1440,” Deacon said. “That’s the highest it has ever been so that’s one indicator that we’re getting stronger students. We’re also getting the same diversity in terms of first generation and ethnicity and those students are coming in with stronger scores as well.” The incoming class represents 185 black students, up 13 from last year. The number of foreign nationals increased to 137 students, around 8 percent of the incoming class, from last year’s 125. The undergraduate schools reported steady yields, with the exception of Georgetown College, which saw an increase of about 3 percent from 45 percent to 48 percent. The School of Foreign Service reported a 50 percent yield, the NHS recorded a 50 percent
yield and the McDonough School of Business yielded 55 percent of applicants. The increase in the College’s yield may be attributed to a shift in the applicants’ interest for the humanities and social sciences, according to Deacon. “The biggest percentage increase was the College, which is usually the lowest of yields,” Deacon said. “That would be an indication that students in the humanities and social sciences are saying yes at a higher rate.” Deacon said the overall increases in applicants may be due to a desire to live in Washington, D.C. “There may be something going on that is causing Washington to be a much more appealing place to come. For the first time in maybe 30 years, we’re seeing indications that in this generation overall, there is more interest in being more active in your future,” Deacon said. “Students are saying, ‘I want to get in there where the action is.’”
Commencement Weekend Starts With McCourt COMMENCEMENT, from A1
GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY
Community members gathered in Dahlgren Chapel on Monday to remember the life of Fr. Howard Gray, S.J., who died Monday, May 7 following complications from a car accident.
Honoring Fr. Howard Gray GRAY, from A1 “champion of the way that lay leadership can work in Jesuit institutions,” according to Fr. Matthew Carnes, S.J., a Georgetown Jesuit and government professor. “He had a sense that lay people can be leaders, and then what the Jesuit role becomes is continuing to care for the spirit of the institution,” Carnes said. He took on this supportive role in 2007, when he joined the university’s Jesuit community as special assistant to the president. For the next decade, Gray served as a spiritual adviser to DeGioia and other senior administrators, while overseeing a number of administrative tasks, including headhunting candidates for key positions in the Office of Mission and Ministry. As a Jesuit leader on campus, Gray championed a vision of the Jesuit identity that embraced openness and inclusion. Gray was part of a generation of Jesuits that “rediscovered the spirituality of the Jesuits” as focusing on the individual and their relationship with God — a spiritual conviction that led him to embrace diversity in a way that some others in his church did not, according to Carnes. “Just think of the different identities that you can cherish when you cherish the individual,” Carnes said. “And that was something he did so well, and everything flowed from that.” In 2008, Gray stood up against conservative elements in the Catholic church as a strong advocate for the founding of an LGBTQ Resource Center at Georgetown, the first of its kind at a Jesuit university in the United States. Gray’s advocacy was “instrumental” in providing the center with the moral authority it needed to get off the ground, according to Shiva Subbaraman, the center’s director. “He always pointed out that we had an obligation to have the Center ‘because’ we are Jesuit and Catholic, not ‘despite’,” Subbaraman wrote in an email to The Hoya. “Fr Howard Gray ‘saw’ LGBTQ people in all of our full range of humanity.” In 2016, Gray accepted DeGioia’s call to lead the university’s large and complex Office of Mission and Ministry as interim vice president following the resignation of Fr. Kevin O’Brien, S.J., to become dean of the Jesuit School of Theology at Santa Clara University. It was a demanding role, particularly with Gray’s physical health declining at the age of 86. That fall, Gray faced health episodes stemming from a heart condition, always returning to work shortly thereafter. He fulfilled the role with “incredible energy and enthusiasm” the entire year, Carnes said. Gray embraced and promoted
religious diversity at Georgetown and was particularly fascinated by interreligious dialogue: Gray was beloved by many of the university’s chaplains, Catholic and non-Catholic, whom he would often engage in theological discussion, according to colleagues. While leading the Office of Mission and Ministry, Gray welcomed Georgetown’s first full-time director of Hindu life and the first Hindu priest to be a chaplain at any U.S. university, Brahmachari Vrajvihari Sharan. After his yearlong term heading the Office of Mission and Ministry, Gray largely retired from public life and moved to a Jesuit retreat home in West Bloomfield, Mich.
“He was someone who could make time for you and sit down with you and talk to you about the big and small things in your life.” Fr. matthew carnes, S.j. Professor, Georgetown University
Aside from his official responsibilities, over his decade on campus, Gray frequently played the role of spiritual guide to members of the administration, faculty, student body and Jesuit community. His first-floor office in Gervase Hall, the inconspicuous brick building adjoining Isaac Hawkins Hall near Dahlgren Quad, became a chapel in its own right for members of the community seeking wisdom or support. Gray listened closely and asked pointed questions, according to Carnes. A lover of literature and the written word, he would often provide wisdom in the form of scripture verses, lines from old novels or anecdotes from his personal life. “He was someone who could make time for you and sit down with you and talk about the big and the small things in your life, and give you his absolute, undivided attention,” Carnes said. “And by doing that, to call out the best in you and help you bring out and see the best in yourself.” ——— Impressive as Gray was as a leader, his friends will remember him even more for who he was as a friend. While Gray was a “spiritual giant,” Fr. Gregory Schenden, S.J., said, he was also “so fully human.” Few people were closer to Gray than Fr. John O’Malley, S.J., 90, one of his best friends of seven decades and a Georgetown theology professor. At Georgetown, the two elder Jesuits were next-
door neighbors in Wolfington Hall, with Schenden on Gray’s other side. “They would knock on each other’s doors and bug each other sometimes,” Carnes said. “The two of them could be so much fun to see together, play off one another, encourage each other and laugh at one another and themselves.” In a sermon at Gray’s funeral Saturday, O’Malley recalled how he and Gray “bantered and teased and feigned indignation at one another’s foibles.” “You might gather some insight into the quality of our friendship if I tell you that sometimes with me he began a conversation by asking the endearing question, ‘Do you know what’s wrong with you?’” O’Malley said. Gray had a playful sense of humor, as well as a taste for film that extended from foreign-language dramas to slapstick comedies, and he could enjoy a drink or two: Bourbon Manhattans were his favorite, according to Schenden. Gray often stayed in touch with old friends by sending notes and cards, usually picked up from museums or from his travels — something with an artistic flourish, and always carefully chosen for the right person and moment, according to Carnes. Gray and his sister, Marge, were particularly inseparable: He called her nearly every day and made trips to visit her most holidays. They often told stories about their mother and how much they had learned from her as kids about teaching love and virtue by example. This lesson would be the theme of Gray’s final lecture at Georgetown, and according to his friends, the hallmark of his legacy on campus. While Gray was in town for his lecture last month, he made sure to keep a busy schedule of dinners and other occasions to share with old friends, including meeting his old next-door neighbor Schenden for a nightcap on the evening of April 18 after his lecture. Schenden recalled telling him, “You know, How, I didn’t realize until these days you’ve been back how spoiled I was having you here in my life each and every day.” Gray certainly felt likewise. In a 2013 viewpoint published in The Hoya, Gray reflected on how he had learned to see his friends as “gifts to be valued.” “Throughout our ordinary days, we are surrounded by other women and men who are gifts,” Gray wrote. “If I look back over the years, I see all the people who’ve populated my history not as a cast of characters but as good folks who taught me how to understand life, how to support others, how to laugh through my tears and sorrows, how to extend myself in compassion and care and how to forgive and be forgiven.”
conflict. PeacePlayers operates in troubled U.S. cities such as Baltimore and Detroit, as well as in the Middle East, Northern Ireland and elsewhere abroad. Friday’s events culminate with the McDonough School of Business commencement for graduate and undergraduate students. The ceremony is planned for 3 p.m. on Healy Lawn as of Thursday evening, but in case of a rain disruption, there will be two separate ceremonies for undergraduate and graduate students at 3 p.m. and 5:30 p.m., respectively, in McDonough. The commencement speaker for the MSB, Ursula Burns, is the executive chairman of the supervisory board for VEON, a multinational telecommunication company, and the former chair and CEO of Xerox. On Saturday, Georgetown College students are scheduled to meet for their commencement at 9 a.m. on Healy Lawn. If the commencement is moved to McDonough for rain there will be two ceremonies: the first at 9 a.m. will be for students with last names beginning with A-K, and the second at 11:30 a.m. will be for students with last names beginning with L-Z. Susan Hockfield (GRD ’79), president emerita and professor of neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will deliver the commencement address. She earned a Ph.D. from the Georgetown University School of Medicine, carrying out
her doctoral research at the National Institutes of Health in nearby Bethesda, Md. She served as the sixteenth president of MIT from 2004 to 2012, according to her biography on the institute’s website. Nursing and Health Studies graduating seniors have their commencement at 2 p.m. Saturday, tentatively on Healy Lawn. The commencement speech is set to be delivered by Luci Baines Johnson, the daughter of President Lyndon Johnson and the founder of LBJ Family Wealth Advisors. She previously attended the NHS but dropped out in 1966 because she decided to marry, which was prohibited for students in the school at the
“To get where we need to go, we need innovation — a lot of innovation. Innovation includes technology innovation, it includes policy innovation.” ERNEST MONIZ Former U.S. Secretary of Energy
time. On Saturday evening at 5 p.m., the combined graduate and undergraduate ceremony for the School of Foreign Service is set to take place on Healy Lawn. As with the MSB, the commencement will be split into separate ceremonies in McDonough: undergraduate degrees at 5 p.m. and graduate degrees at 7:30
p.m. United Nations SecretaryGeneral António Guterres is set to speak in one of the most anticipated addresses of the commencement season. All commencement speakers on Friday and Saturday will be awarded Doctor of Humane Letters degrees. Finally, the School of Medicine and Law Center have their ceremonies on Sunday. Medical students meet at 11 a.m. at DAR Constitution Hall near downtown D.C. The ceremony will feature a commencement address by Thomas Nasca, president and CEO for the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, the organization responsible for most graduate medical training programs for physicians in the United States. Nasca will receive an honorary Doctor of Science degree. Also on Sunday morning, the university is hosting a baccalaureate mass at 9 a.m. on Healy Lawn, weather permitting, and a commencement brunch in the Leavey Center Ballroom at 10:45 a.m. Georgetown’s commencement ceremonies conclude with the Law Center commencement at 2 p.m. Sunday on Healy Lawn, weather permitting. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), the District’s non-voting representative in the House of Representatives, is set to speak. Norton will receive an honorary Doctor of Laws degree along with Merrick Garland, the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit who was nominated to the Supreme Court in 2016 but not confirmed.
ERNEST MONIZ
Former U.S. Secretary of State Ernest Moniz urged the formation of innovative policy addressing the interests of all citizens at the McCourt School of Public Policy’s commencement ceremony.