FOPmates Reunite To Deliver Orations

One of this week’s many reunions will take place in front of the Tercentenary Theater audience this morning. Charles J. McNamara ’07, who will give the Latin oration, and Daniel J. Wilner ’07, who will deliver the English oration, will share the stage nearly four years after eating food sprinkled with dirt on the same Freshman Outdoor Program (FOP) trip as incoming freshmen.

The morning exercises of Harvard’s 356th Commencement will begin with McNamara—who is a class marshal—speaking the traditional greeting, “Salvete.” The Classics concentrator from Lowell House will then deliver his speech “Iohannes Harvard, Eques Iediensis”—“John Harvard, Jedi Knight”—entirely in Latin, a language that will be understood by few in the audience.

But between the dative nouns and passive periphrastic constructions, McNamara, a native of northern Michigan, will mention “Han Solo” and “Chewbacca.”

“It’s very funny to talk about something that is so common to everyone,” McNamara said, “in a language that to most people in the audience is very alien.”

This discussion of modern culture in a dead language isn’t new to McNamara, despite having only started his Latin studies two years ago. He spent last summer taking a Latin class at the Vatican, where he would “eat cheese, drink wine, and talk in Latin about Fashion Week in New York City.”

The class, taught by renowned Vatican Latinist Father Reginald Foster, was the impetus for McNamara to apply for the Latin oration.

“Reggie Foster is the most unique person on the earth,” McNamara said. “It’s not a typical Latin class.”

After graduation, McNamara plans to teach English in Mississippi for Teach for America. His said his plans beyond that are uncertain, as of now.

“I’m excited about having two more years to not figure out what I want to do with my life,” he said.

His partner in FOP—Wilner, a philosophy concentrator—will address the common indecisiveness of Harvard students in his English oration, “Daring to Choose.”

Because Harvard students have “so many exciting thing to do, choices are so exceptionally hard when there’s a high opportunity cost to each one,” said Wilner, who is one of nine Rhodes Scholars from Harvard this year.

When given the role of Hamlet in a January 2005 Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club production of Hamlet, Wilner—like the character he was slated to play—faced a difficult choice.

“Even though I’d wanted to play this role for a long time...I felt very conflicted,” Wilner said. “Was it the right time for me?”

In the end, Wilner decided to take the role, and will be drawing upon his extensive theatrical experience today.

Wilner won the World Individual Debating and Public Speaking Championship in 2002, but, despite his background in speaking, he has still been practicing any chance he gets.

“We don’t get to use any notes, there’s no podium, there’s no safety net,” Wilner said. “I’ve been rehearsing it again and again in my head, in the shower, anytime I walk anywhere. I just keep repeating it.”

Milner, of Montreal, Quebec, will study children’s mental health at Oxford on his Rhodes scholarship.

“They are a very nicely contrasted pair,” said Pope Professor of the Latin Language and Literature R. J. Tarrant, who chairs the selection committee for the orations. “The Latin oration is very light, and very timely...The undergraduate English has a very universal message.”

McNamara and Milner will be followed by Kennedy School of Government student Richard Crowder, who will deliver the graduate English oration.