Andreas Jeninga/The Hoya Meena Kannan (SFS ’04) and fellow graduates applaud faculty as they march into cDonough Gymnasium for the fifth annual Senior Convocation on onday.

The class of 2004 gathered for the last time as a collective class Monday afternoon, donning caps and gowns for the fifth annual Senior Convocation in McDonough Gymnasium.

The event featured six student speakers and several administrators and professors but was the first Senior Convocation without a keynote address from a distinguished alumnus or professor. Last year Maria Shriver (CAS ’77), then an NBC correspondent, and in 2002 screenwriter Jonah Nolan (COL ’99) addressed the respective graduating classes.

English Professor John Glavin (CAS ’64) explained that while the committee in charge of the ceremony, which he chaired, had originally planned to have an outside speaker, the arrangement of this year’s convocation was able to better reflect the New Student Convocation without a keynote address.

“The idea was to have this be its own ceremony, separate from commencement, with its own integrity and to make it as close as possible as a bookend to the convocation during New Student Orientation,” he said.

Senior Convocation substitutes for a unified commencement ceremony, which the university ended in 1987 after it could not provide enough parking for parents and guests of all seniors.

Three student speakers were selected to address their class after submitting drafts of speeches that reflected on the themes of artin Luther King, Jr.’s, “I Have a Dream” speech.

Jason Atwood (COL ’04) said that Georgetown had challenged him to change his preconceived ideas on politics, religion and other principles.

“In the classrooms here at Georgetown, I learned that some men live, but forget to dream. Other men dream but forget to live,” he said. “In the classroom out here, we live dreaming.”

David Sawyer (COL ’04) discussed his arrival at Georgetown as a transfer in 2001 from Weber State University in Ogden, Utah.

Diego Quijano (SFS ’04) said that in his homeland of Panama it was “normal to be apathetic – to be concerned is to be strange.” He came to the United States for high school before matriculating to Georgetown, where he was able to become involved because of the people he met on campus. He reflected on the passage of King’s address, “We cannot walk alone.”

“We tend to forget the most important thing about dreams – that we will never be able to achieve them by ourselves,” he said. “That is what Georgetown taught me. That is what the people in Georgetown taught me.”

College Dean Jane McAuliffe offered a response to the three speeches, citing her own experience as a demonstrator on the National Mall when King spoke from the Lincoln Memorial in 1963.

“I remember being both scared and proud,” she said. “But a strong sense of pride overwhelmed the fear.”

McAuliffe echoed King’s call for an end to intolerance and discrimination and referred to incidents of racial intolerance on Georgetown’s campus this year.

“On our own campus and in our nation and world we have seen gross intolerance and disregard for human decency,” she said. “The hope lies in all of you.”

Students, faculty and administrators also took time to remember Sara McFlynn, a classmate who died on Aug. 8, 2002, in Colorado of an abdominal infection complicated by diabetes.

“[She] was given every gift but the gift of time,” Provost James J. O’Donnell said.

The ceremony also featured the induction of the senior class into the Alumni Association by the receiving of class pins by the graduating seniors.

Senior Class Committee Chair Levee Brooks (COL ’04) accepted the pins on behalf of the class. Brooks discussed his experience fleeing warfare in Liberia when he was eight and spending the following four years as a refugee in Sierra Leone and then Senegal, tying his childhood ordeal to the terror of Sept. 11, 2001.

“The hard-fought stability I thought we had achieved was gone,” he said,

He also expressed his ability to find a strong community in his class at Georgetown.

“I am so proud to be part of a group of people . who put other people’s well being ahead of their own,” he said. “You have become my refuge, and, I hope, I have become yours.”

The co-chairs of the Senior Class Gift Committee, James Shea (COL ’04) and Mairin Priestly (MSB ’04), presented a check to University President John J. DeGioia for $38,067.65.

The money will go toward financial aid and a Jack the Bulldog clock in the Southwest Quad. Over 73 percent of the class donated $28,067.65 to the gift fund, breaking last year’s record for class participation and securing a $10,000 anonymous donation.

“You endured three years of construction, so it is appropriate that your gift will go to that part of the campus,” DeGioia said.

He also noted that the senior class had witnessed major national and international events, including the 2000 presidential election, Sept. 11, 2001 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“You all created your own history here on this campus,” he said. “You leave here with a richer understanding of yourself. This week you will leave the Hilltop, but you will never be leaving Georgetown.”