Commencement

Former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said yesterday that he will speak at Loyola College's commencement today despite protests that his abortion-rights views are inappropriate for a Catholic school. Loyola officials and many students also defended the selection of Giuliani as keynote speaker, saying that his role during the 9/11 attacks makes him a good choice. Giuliani has a special resonance at Loyola because almost 40 percent of its undergraduates are from the New York area. The attacks occurred during the first week of school for the Class of 2005, when many freshmen were away from home for the first time.

It's clear the future holds great opportunities. It also holds great pitfalls. The trick will be to avoid the pitfalls, seize the opportunities, and get home by six o'clock. Woody Allen Good morning. To our honorary readers and to their family members and friends, we bring greetings. This is a season of personal reckoning, as commencements are under way at colleges and universities throughout Maryland. In great halls and on great lawns, graduates are implored to hitch their wagons to the stars, shoot for the moon and, by all means, with Godspeed.

Jamie Falcone is in a class by herself. Literally. Yesterday, the Western Maryland College senior donned a black cap and crepe gown and collected her diploma as her family and friends looked on, beaming. Unlike most commencements, the ceremony contained no boring, longwinded speeches, no "Pomp and Circumstance," no directives to "Hold your applause until the end," and no bubble-blowing, beach ball-bouncing fellow graduates with "Hi Mom" lettered on their mortarboards That's because there were no fellow graduates.

Hoots and hollers rose to the stage when Howard Community College President Mary Ellen Duncan called Nicholas Denson's name. Fellow graduates cheered for the 19-year-old at the 29th commencement of Howard Community College at Merriweather Post Pavilion yesterday. A couple years earlier, Denson's parents abandoned him after their divorce. "I didn't have a nice family. Neither one wanted to take me," said Denson of his parents before the ceremony. Alone at 17, the Atholton High student moved in with a friend's family and began to think hard about his future.

As a debate swirls in the Catholic Church over how to treat Catholic politicians who back abortion rights, Mount St. Mary's College has withdrawn an offer of an honorary degree to White House counsel Alberto Gonzales after a campus protest over his support for the death penalty. The reversal came after some students and faculty asked that Gonzales, a potential Supreme Court candidate, not speak at the Catholic college's commencement May 23 because of his record on the death penalty, said Mount St. Mary's President Thomas H. Powell.

As he opened his talk yesterday to Goucher's new graduates, Bill Cosby warned them that he was going to use language they might not be accustomed to hearing from a commencement speaker. "I'm going to use a curse word," he said. "At least, it used to be a curse word." Cosby then proceeded to tell of a trio arriving at the pearly gates of heaven, a physicist, a mathematician and an elderly couple. Before they would be allowed in, they had to come up with a question that God couldn't answer.

PRINCESS ANNE - It took two years of adjusting to the logistics of his demanding schedule of commitments around the globe, but officials at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore finally landed the Nobel Prize-winning commencement speaker they wanted: South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Yesterday, more than 7,000 students, parents, alumni and dignitaries packed the campus gymnasium and overflowed into an adjacent building where the proceedings could be viewed on video screens. The 74-year-old Tutu, an archbishop emeritus of the Anglican Diocese of Capetown, drew standing ovations as he began and ended his 20-minute address at the 118th graduation at the historically black university.

Drawing inspiration from the nation's efforts in the 1960s to send a man to the moon, President Clinton pledged during a Morgan State University commencement address yesterday that U.S. scientists would devise a vaccine within a decade to prevent people from becoming infected with the AIDS virus."

Don't expect Mary Sanford Williams at the Baltimore City Community College commencement exercises today. She might be the college's oldest graduate, but the 80-year-old has things to do. There are summer school classes, reading she needs to do and cleaning in her three-floor Baltimore home. Besides, she doesn't have the energy for an all-day affair. "Well, you know, I'm 80 years old," says the West Baltimore resident. "When you get to be 80, there's only so much you can do. Besides, I'm in summer school already, so I'm busy."

As part of this blog's effort to provide LGBT-related news and commentary, we'll be bringing you links to stories from around the web in a weekly feature called Looking Out . Here's a look at what's making a splash today: -- Same-sex marriage has made pretty high-profile strides in the last three weeks, but things are picking up across the Atlantic, too. France's gay marriage law has been deemed constitutional by the nation's constitutional council....