Rhon­dor Dowlat

Gold medal­list Je­hue Gor­don yes­ter­day grad­u­at­ed from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus with a First Class Ho­n­ours De­gree.

Gor­don, one of T&T's top track and field ath­letes, com­plet­ed his bach­e­lors in sport man­age­ment with a dou­ble mi­nor in mar­ket­ing and hu­man re­sources man­age­ment even dur­ing the pe­ri­od where he copped gold medals at sev­er­al in­ter­na­tion­al and re­gion­al meets, in­clud­ing: the World Cham­pi­onships, Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean Ju­nior Cham­pi­onships, World Ju­nior Cham­pi­onships and Carif­ta Games.

De­liv­er­ing the vale­dic­to­ry speech at yes­ter­day's So­cial Sci­ences fac­ul­ty grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny, Jael Kris­ten Davis urged her fel­low grad­u­ates not to get lost with their ti­tles and do not be­come pre­oc­cu­pied with what you want to be­come that you over­look your im­pact on so­ci­ety.

"I en­cour­age you to re­mem­ber your pur­pose as you go for­ward; re­flect on how you are go­ing to con­tribute to chang­ing lives in our beloved Caribbean re­gion and by ex­ten­sion, the uni­verse. I leave you to de­cide; what do you want to do? What do you want to be? And is it just for you? Or is it for the bet­ter­ment of hu­man­i­ty?" Davis said.

Davis, who had the priv­i­lege to work with the Vic­tim and Wit­ness Sup­port Unit of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice over the past four months, touched on bits and pieces of her ex­pe­ri­ences, on­ly to cap­ture the true essence of the re­al is­sues that peo­ple face.

"I heard the cries of a moth­er whose son was mur­dered in her home while she was asleep. I in­ter­vened with sev­er­al chil­dren who were brought by their par­ents to the po­lice sta­tion deemed be­yond con­trol be­cause in our so­ci­ety, there is rea­son to sug­gest that the chil­dren are be­com­ing par­ents.

I lis­tened to an un­em­ployed moth­er who strug­gled to pro­vide for her chil­dren af­ter leav­ing her abu­sive com­mon law hus­band. I saw fear in the eyes of a ten year old as he spoke about the chil­dren who had bul­lied him at school. This is re­al­i­ty. these are the is­sues that face our Caribbean re­gion­al so to­day, grad­u­ates, I ask you, what are you go­ing to do with this pow­er­ful weapon called ed­u­ca­tion that is now in your hands?" Davis asked.