May 25, 2011:  When Michael Mietlicki, a graduating senior at Sarah Lawrence College from South Plains, New Jersey, held high a four-foot wide cardboard replica of a check for $75,969.25, the audience of 430 fellow classmates went wild with cheers and whistles.  The check was the senior class check, presented at commencement exercises Friday, May 20, under a sprawling tent on the front lawn of the campus.  Hundreds of parents, grandparents, and friends also attended, overflowing the tent's boundaries.

"Our real gift," Mietlicki said, "is the support, excitement, and intellectual stimulation that we have found here."  The funds were raised at events ranging from a milkshake night to a mimosa brunch.  A record-breaking 45% of the senior class contributed, along with 200 senior families.

More gales of applause and screams greeted the commencement address by Arianna Huffington, an Internet publishing entrepreneur whom the college president, Karen R. Lawrence, called "one of the most distinctive and influential voices shaping communications today."  The author of thirteen books, she launched The Huffington Post, a widely read news and blog site, in 2005.

Huffington told the graduates, "If you look at the world that you're about to inherit, it's a split-screen world.  On one side ... we see a kind of explosion of irrationality, of darkness. ... It's also a world in which 70% of people in this country think we're on the wrong track, in which 25 million people are unemployed or underemployed, and in which for the first time, total outstanding student loan debt will be higher than total credit card debt, over a trillion dollars. ... But on the other side of the split screen is the world you are creating. ... On this part there's an explosion of creativity, innovation, empathy, and compassion.  You are the most connected and engaged generation in history. ... At the very moment we are absorbing this connected world, we are transforming it. ...You are still asking the big questions and contemplating the cosmic riddles about why we're here and what life is really about, and please don't stop contemplating these cosmic riddles when you get busy earning a living."

Huffington went on to say, "So, as you are leaving this magical place, please don't wait for leaders on a white horse to save us.  Look in the mirror and discover the leader in the mirror.  Tap into your own leadership potential. ...That means daring to take risks and daring to fail as many times as it takes along the way to success. ...To do it all with more balance, more joy, with more sleep, and more gratitude."

After Huffington's speech and at the end of the graduation, President Lawrence declared, "In the current climate of skepticism about the value of higher education, it is imperative for us to find the right language, stories, images, and examples to convey the way in which the education we offer matters in the lives of our students and the work they will go on to do in the world. ... At this particular moment, I am thrilled to be looking out at [hundreds] of lustrous individual examples of the transformative work of a Sarah Lawrence education."

Pictured here:  Arianna Huffington speaking at the 2011 Sarah Lawrence College graduation.