Oberlin Celebrates the Class of 2025 at Commencement

More than 700 students participated in Commencement exercises, which featured a keynote address from award-winning science journalist Sonia Shah ’90.

May 26, 2025

Communications Staff

many students in mortarboards facing the commencement stage. — Photo credit: Alaina Battle

Oberlin’s Class of 2025, more than 700 graduates spanning the college and conservatory, celebrated Commencement under a sun-filled sky on Memorial Day.

The ceremony, which featured a keynote address from Sonia Shah ’90, investigative science journalist and critically acclaimed author of prize-winning books on migration, disease, and human-animal relations, capped a weekend of Commencement and Milestone Reunion festivities that included family socials, conservatory recitals, and Illumination.

Students processed onto the square to the sounds of the Commencement Brass Ensemble, with one senior joining in on kazoo. They sported black robes and mortarboards adorned with colorful homemade flowers, laurel wreaths, sticker collages, and other celebrations of their time at Oberlin. Many wore a decorative red and gold pin commemorating Oberlin’s first Commencement as a carbon-neutral campus.

The celebration opened with an invocation from multifaith chaplain David Dorsey, followed by greetings from Board of Trustees Chair Chris Canavan ’84 and Alumni Association President Jan Weintraub Cobb ’71.

President Carmen Twillie Ambar recognized faculty members retiring at the conclusion of the year and reminded students that they hadn’t reached this milestone alone. “I would like to ask you to acknowledge the people who helped get you here today—namely your parents, your grandparents, your families, your friends.”

Graduating senior Omukoko Okoth, representing the Class of 2025 as the student commencement speaker, described his unlikely path to Oberlin.

“I come from a remote village in Kenya,” he said. “The dream of higher education was just as remote, let alone the possibility of studying at an exceptional institution like Oberlin. My story in many ways confirms that indeed all roads lead to Oberlin—even those that wind through uncertainty and the unknown.

“While I still struggle to explain how I got here, I know one thing for sure: That I’m endlessly grateful. Grateful for the privilege of receiving a world-class education. Grateful to work alongside you, my peers, who are not just brilliant minds but kind souls. I am grateful for the life-changing opportunities I have received in this place, and I hope that Oberlin will continue to use education to transform the lives of those for whom all they have is a dream.”

For the handful of months we get to be here, those of us who might be considered too strange or too quiet or too intense, we move from the margins toward the center and we feel—for many of us for the first time in our lives—that we belong.” —Sonia Shah

Four distinguished alums received honors from Oberlin faculty:

Elizabeth “Liz” Burgess ’73 (Distinguished Service to the Community), longtime Oberlin resident and board member of organizations that advance local business, philanthropy, and affordable housing.
Jennifer L. Morgan ’86 (Honorary Doctor of Humanities), a historian and scholar of the early modern Black Atlantic known for pioneering work on the intersections of race, gender, and slavery. Morgan has earned national recognition, including a 2024 MacArthur Fellowship.
Timothy M. Uyeki ’81 (Honorary Doctor of Science), a physician, epidemiologist, and global health expert with more than 25 years leading efforts to prevent and control influenza and emerging infectious diseases worldwide.
Sonia Shah, awarded an Honorary Doctor of Humanities 35 years after her own graduation from Oberlin.

In her address, Shah expressed empathy for graduates entering a world in which shared resources and humanity are increasingly threatened by those who, in her words, look around at our living earth and see raw materials—people “willing to scrape the final dregs of fossil energy and raze the last of our forests.”

“I’m not one to sugarcoat it,” Shah said. “ I share your uncertainty about our future, about what comforts we will find, about where we will find community, and what kind of work there will be for us in this new world emerging around us.”

We humans, she said, are “animals among animals”: organic beings interconnected with the natural world around us. Our well-being is tied to nature and our connections with each other; “it’s why our depression and anxiety lift when we hear just a few moments of birdsong.” These connections, she continued, are a “soul-nourishing” source of comfort and solidarity as we confront myriad challenges, from climate change to robots taking our jobs. She concluded by reminding the Class of 2025 that they leave Oberlin uniquely equipped to handle whatever comes next.

“ For the handful of months we get to be here, those of us who might be considered too strange or too quiet or too intense, we move from the margins toward the center and we feel—for many of us for the first time in our lives—that we belong.

“And so we locate a muscle deep in our body and we activate it, and that muscle, once activated, gives us the power to speak up for who we really are and what we really want and how we really feel.

“ So my friends in the Class of 2025…you have everything you need. You are ready, so you go get them, you bunch of animals!”

View the entire 2025 Commencement on YouTube.

View photos from Commencement and Milestone Reunion Weekend on Oberlin’s Flickr.