Thank you, President Torres. Welcome, Governor Patrick. Thank you, everyone, for being here.When the founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony arrived on these shores in 1630,they came as dissenters -- rejecting institutions of their English homeland.But I have always found it striking that here in the wilderness, where mere survival was the foremost challenge,they so rapidly felt compelled to found this seat of learning so that New England, in the words of William Hubbard of the Class of 1642,so the New England "might be supplied with persons fit to manage the affairs of both church and state."Church, state, and College. Three institutions they deemed essential to this Massachusetts experiment.Three institutions to ensure that the colonists, as Governor John Winthrop urged, could be "knit together as one" in a new society in a brave new world.Dozens of generations have come and gone since then,and the University's footprint has expanded considerably beyond a small cluster of wooden buildings.But we have never lost faith in the capacity of each generation to build a better society than the one it was born into.
