Recently, several countries, including Canada, held national elections. We also have entered the annual graduation season, when students have completed their studies and cross a stage to receive their diplomas and certificates. You might wonder what these two quite distinct events have in common. Both mark important milestones—not just for the individual candidates, whether politicians or students—but also for the communities around them. Whether we are voting for a particular platform of policies or celebrating the collective expertise and knowledge that graduands presumably have acquired and can contribute, these events showcase a representative set of ideas and talents that will shape the future of the world around them.
Both elections and graduations are the outcomes of participatory, competitive processes. Ideally, they are measures of public accountability and trust. Through elections and graduations, the public manifests certain expectations—that these events are backed up by validated, objective measures and commitments. They are expressions of a kind of social contract between society and the institutions that contribute to the outcome. For an elected official, that may mean a set of obligations to realize campaign promises. For a graduating learner, we expect someone to have a certain level of established competencies that prepare them for employment or advancement in careers and society. Both require persistent effort, hard work, and resources of time and money on the part of the participants and their support systems leading up to voting or graduation day. Candidates for office rely on campaign workers and infrastructures, financial and political backers, and an array of coalition partners invested in their success. Graduating learners rely on their instructors, administrative staff, schoolmates, friends, family, alumni and—in the case of adult learners—often a supportive employer to succeed and reach the finish line.
Elections and graduation ceremonies carry with them symbolic and emotional meaning and signify a new beginning, with all the hopes, uncertainties, and anxieties that come with that. Both events represent important forms of peaceful social change that extend well beyond the momentary focus on electoral outcomes or celebrating the successful completion of a rigorous academic program. But the kind of future that follows may not be immediately clear—nor is it guaranteed. As the actor Jane Fonda recently noted in a to the 2025 graduating class of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism, where I used to work, “Hope takes action…. Hope is a muscle like the heart. It’s when we take action that hope comes alive.” She also referenced the late Czech playwright, activist, and former statesman, Václav Havel, who declared that “Hope is not a feeling of certainty that everything ends well. Hope is just a feeling that life and work have a meaning.” (, 1987) Thus, we can think of elections and graduations as two channels by which we activate hope and exercise our rights and obligations as members of civil—and ideally, democratic—societies.
To those who are getting ready to complete this milestone at the 51łÔąĎÍř School of Continuing Studies—as graduands, as faculty and staff, and families pushing all of their learners to get to the finish line for the academic year—I congratulate you on what has already been accomplished and is yet to come!