It was never a given that Rachel Dratch ’88 would deliver a Commencement address to the Class of 2026 to a crowd of 10,000 graduates, families, and friends on the Green and more than 7,000 viewers watching by livestream.
After her own Commencement, Dratch described facing rejection after rejection as she attempted to fulfill “this crazy little dream that I wanted to try to maybe become an actor,” she said.
Dratch is now a Tony-nominated actor, comedian, author, and podcast host who spent seven years on the cast of Saturday Night Live and has appeared in numerous roles in film, television, and on stage. But when she first applied to graduate school for theater, “Guess what? I did not get into my number one choice. I also did not get into choices two through 40. That’s right: I did not get in anywhere.”
She was also turned down when she first tried to enroll in classes at Chicago’s famed Second City improv theater (she performed there for four years), and when she first auditioned for SNL.
“Here’s what I want you to take from my experience. Don’t let those rejections define who you are and make you lose faith in yourself,” she said.
“Sure, the word ‘no’ can sting. And believe me, it still can. But sometimes a ‘no’ is just a ‘not yet.’ Maybe it’s just not the right moment. Maybe you need a little more training and experience. And maybe, like me with grad school, that ‘no’ can be a magical guardrail pointing you to a ‘yes’ you hadn’t even thought of.”
During the ceremony, Dartmouth conferred 1,076 graduate or professional degrees and 1,138 degrees to undergraduates from 58 countries and 49 states, Puerto Rico, and Washington, D.C.
Lest the graduates think her advice too optimistic for the times, Dratch invited her SNL alter-ego, the perpetually buzzkilling Debbie Downer, to briefly take over part of the speech, assisted by Noah Prescott ’26 on the sad trombone.
“Quite an achievement graduating from Dartmouth,” her Debbie Downer character said. “Of course, thanks to AI there won’t be any jobs left, so congrats to all on your mandatory gap years.”
But her main message was a lesson she learned from performing improv, which she first discovered as a Dartmouth sophomore with the group then called Said and Done. She encouraged the Class of 2026 to think of themselves as an ensemble, like an improv group “building scenes together with no script.”
“To do that you need listening, you need trust, and it helps if you have fun,” she said. “And the best part is, if one night you’re in the weeds, not bringing your A-game, you’re not going to be left hanging, because someone else can jump in and save the scene. And you’re going to do the same for them. The safety of the ensemble makes the unknown less scary.”
She continued: “Make the agreement that just being in the class of 2026 together is enough of a bond. This isn’t the end of your class as a class. In fact it’s kind of a beginning. It’s called a commencement.”
And invoking a traditional improv pre-performance ritual, she asked the graduates to “clap the backs of the people next to you and say, ‘Got your back’—and mean it. OK, good, now you’ve sealed it in—sealed in the ensemble.”
To finish on a high note, she said, “We’re going to end with happy trombones.”
Dratch then called on her fellow honorands, President Sian Leah Beilock, the trustees, and other dignitaries onstage to pull out an assortment of kazoos, rattles, and instruments and led an upbeat rendition of Seventy-Six Trombones.
‘Be the agents of change’
At the ceremony, President Beilock presented an honorary degree to Dratch and six other honorands:
- Karen Evans ’76, playwright, educator, and arts advocate
- Maria Klawe, educator, mathematician, computer scientist
- Gary Love ’76, philanthropist and public servant
- Greg Lukianoff, free speech advocate
- Alfred Moses ’51, attorney, philanthropist, and diplomat
- Vivek Murthy, former U.S. surgeon general
In her remarks to the graduates, Beilock said that students and their families had taken “a leap of faith in choosing Dartmouth.”
“That trust is a rare and special thing” at a time when American confidence in institutions, including higher education, “is at an all-time low,” Beilock said. And acknowledging that some of the criticisms against higher education are valid, she encouraged the graduates to “be the agents of change.”
Invoking the Class of 1976—Dartmouth’s first coeducational class, which is celebrating its 50th reunion—Beilock said that effecting transformational change requires work from both inside and outside institutions.
In the case of coeducation, Dartmouth had leaders like then-President John Kemeny, who was “willing to break from the way things had been done,” and also “an extraordinary class of young women on the outside who courageously walked through newly opened doors,” Beilock said.
For the transformations needed today, she said, “The simple fact is: We need both. We need reformers on the inside, and challengers on the outside. Every example throughout history shows us it almost always takes both.”
And thinking about the impact a half-century of coeducation has had on Dartmouth, she said, “Fifty years ago, the Class of 1976 left this institution, on a day like today, very different than they found it. Better than they found it. That is one of the highest compliments we can pay them. My hope is that 50 years from now, people will say the same about each of you.”
Student speakers: Remember to say ‘yes, and’
Perciliana Moquino ’26 and Rhett Williams ’26, co-presidents of Native Americans at Dartmouth, welcomed attendees to the ceremony.
Moquino, a member of the Kewa and Cochita Pueblos in New Mexico, reminded the audience of how Dartmouth has rededicated itself to its founding mission to educate Native Americans.
“As we in this institution embark on our next chapters, we must remember to learn from and honor each other and our collective diversity with respect and kindness,” said Williams, an enrolled member of the United Houma Nation in Louisiana. “Carrying ourselves with compassion for all beings is how we build strong communities at home, at Dartmouth, and across the globe.”
Valedictorian Ava Rosenbaum ’26, a classically trained cellist and self-described “former theater kid,” encouraged her classmates to embrace “the golden rule of improv—‘yes, and.’ Rachel Dratch made a career from this concept. ‘Yes, and’ means accepting what is in front of you and choosing to build off of it.”
This ability is characteristic of Dartmouth students, Rosenbaum said.
“Many of us ‘yes, and-ed’ into dance or a cappella groups during sophomore summer, study-abroads in unfamiliar places, and unfortunately being 15 minutes late to nearly everything.”
She herself hiked the Fifty, the annual Dartmouth Outing Club trek from Moosilauke Ravine Lodge to Hanover, “despite never considering myself an outdoorsy person.” Rosenbaum also discovered a love for engineering, which ultimately became her major.
“‘Yes, and’ means stepping into uncertainty and saying yes to the things that scare us a little,” she said.
“We are entering a world with no shortage of problems that are easy to criticize and difficult to solve. Dartmouth taught us not to sit on the sidelines waiting for someone more qualified to step in. It taught us to believe that we can be the people who try, the ones who take risks.”
Other highlights of the day’s celebrations included the traditional procession to the Green in academic regalia, the singing of the Alma Mater, the reading of the names of all 2,214 graduates, and the celebration of friendships.
Dratch, in her speech, noted that several of her Dartmouth classmates had returned to Hanover for the weekend to see her Commencement address.
“Hopefully, you have a friend group from Dartmouth, like I do, all these years later. We have our text chains. We are there for births, vacations, and, yes, funerals. Take it from me, your friendships from here can be for life.”
