MANCHESTER, NH — New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker (D) was one of 21,000 people to nab a degree from Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) this year, and he provided the keynote address for one of two Sunday morning commencement ceremonies the university held for its online Class of 2019.
WATCH: Video coverage of the May 12 SNHU graduation.
Booker, who is one of 22 Democrats running for the party’s 2020 presidential nomination, received an honorary doctorate in public service May 12 from SNHU President Paul LeBlanc.
“In 1996, Senator Booker moved to Newark, New Jersey and founded a nonprofit organization to provide legal services for low-income families, helping tenants take on slumlords, improve their living conditions, and stay in their homes,” LeBlanc said. “In the Senate, he has championed policies of economic and equal justice, including leading efforts to reform the broken criminal-justice system, increase wages and ensure hard work is fairly rewarded, and to protect the rights of all Americans to breathe clean air and drink clean water.”
At age 29, Booker was elected to the Newark City Council and served as mayor of the city from 2006 to 2013. Now 50 and a bachelor, Booker is tied for sixth place (with Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar) among New Hampshire voters, according to a Monmouth University poll released May 9. Early last week, Booker unveiled a 14-part plan to combat gun violence but mentioned neither that nor the presidential campaign in his keynote address. Booker addressed the first ceremony of the day, speaking to an audience made up of students from SNHU’s online counseling, business, healthcare, STEM, and education programs, as well as their friends and families. About 3,000 people were present inside the arena, while others watched the live simulcast online.
Booker only used the word “president” in reference to LeBlanc, instead talking about his childhood, his parents (his mother, Carolyn Booker, was in the audience) and one of his personal failures.
He told the story of a woman named Virginia Jones, a community organizer in the inner-city neighborhood where Booker lived as city councilor and mayor.
“She created community,” he said. “She held us together against a slumlord, against violence, against drug dealers.” Booker said her son was shot in killed in the lobby of Booker’s apartment building back in the 1980s. “She showed me in life the definition of hope is an act of conviction that despair will never have the last word.”
When Booker lived in the building, he said, he often encountered a group of boys in the building and, learning they were experimenting with marijuana, decided to take them under his wing.
“Some kids have the privilege to experiment with drugs with no consequence,” Booker said. “We know, in America, there’s no difference between black and white, rich and poor for using marijuana. But our justice system treats you different, if you have less money. As Bryan Stevenson [executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative] says we have a justice system that treats you better if you’re rich and guilty than if you’re poor and innocent.”
The ringleader of the boys was a kid named Hassan Washington whose energy and sense of humor, Booker said, reminded him of his father, Cary Booker. Booker said he took the boys to movies and dinners, but, as he got busier with his work in city hall, lost track of them. Soon after, as mayor, he went to the scene of a shooting.
“One body was covered on the ground, the other being raced to the ambulance,” Booker said. “And I confess to you, graduates, that I barely affirmed the humanity wasted on that sidewalk before I turned to administer to the living.”
Later, Booker said, he learned the body on the ground belonged to Washington. At the funeral, Jones gave him comfort, he said, and perspective.
“And all she did was say two words to me over and over that I want to leave you with,” Booker said. “They’re two words that have nothing to do about organized religion. They have nothing to do with pie in the sky when you die. These two words are about who we are and how we got here. It’s about how to live even in moments when you don’t live … As she rubbed my back as I wept on her shoulder in that courtyard, she said over and over again, ‘Stay faithful. Stay faithful.”
“In the everyday moments, “ Booker concluded, “if you show this kind of spirit, you will heal the world. You will create community. You will be the weavers that tighten the bonds of humanity and show what true strength is. Class of 2019, stay faithful.”
May 12 marked the first graduation from SNHU’s new master’s degree program in clinical mental health counseling. All told, the university held four commencement ceremonies over the weekend, one for on-campus students and three for online. The events, held at SNHU Arena on Elm Street, brought around 20,000 people–graduates and their friends and family–to the Queen City’s downtown. This year, SNHU graduates hailed from 50 states and 58 countries, according to the university.
