Shal­iza Has­sanali

Founder and di­rec­tor of Bo­cas Lit Fest, Ma­ri­na Sa­landy-Brown yes­ter­day plead­ed with grad­uands to de­vel­op a new gen­er­a­tion of lead­ers, home­grown in­sti­tu­tions and an art move­ment to help give a voice to those who can't find theirs.This was Sa­landy-Brown's mes­sage to hun­dreds of stu­dents who grad­u­at­ed yes­ter­day at the Uni­ver­si­ty of West In­dies, Sports and Phys­i­cal Ed­u­ca­tion Cen­tre, St Au­gus­tine.

De­liv­er­ing the grad­u­a­tion ad­dress, Sa­landy-Brown told grad­uands that this was an im­por­tant chap­ter in their lives and many do not get this far for var­i­ous rea­sons."I do not think, how­ev­er, that hav­ing been to uni­ver­si­ty nec­es­sar­i­ly makes you a good per­son, and while in such a rich coun­try as ours, high­er ed­u­ca­tion should be avail­able to all. There should be no no­tion of en­ti­tle­ment or of be­ing su­pe­ri­or."

She said one must al­ways guard against the sense that things should hap­pen for them or life's lucky break makes them a cut above the rest."You should know that af­ter hubris comes the fall."Pri­or to her ad­dress Sa­landy-Brown, who has had a dis­tin­guished ca­reer in me­dia, the arts and lit­er­a­ture, was pre­sent­ed with the Doc­tor of Let­ters (DLitt), Hon­oris Causa of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, by Chan­cel­lor George A O Al­leyne.Sa­landy-Brown said as chil­dren we all learn that not all is fair.

"And as we go out in­to the world of work and still more com­plex re­la­tion­ships, we re­alise that much is al­so dis­hon­est, elu­sive and il­lu­sive. We meet mis­an­throp­ic peo­ple, those who seem hell bent on cre­at­ing dis­or­der, those who are will­ful­ly cor­ro­sive."How­ev­er, she said as a peo­ple we have to find a cen­tre in our­selves and draw up­on the knowl­edge we have gained.Sa­landy-Brown said arts of­fer much in help­ing us to make sense of the world and to see be­yond the im­me­di­ate.