Hey Jimmy Fallon – s’up?
Remember that greeting? You said “What’s up, Golden Knights?” at the Saint Rose graduation ceremony back in 2009, when you graduated and received an honorary degree. It was especially memorable for many of us.
On stage, you grabbed the college’s “mace” – a yellow metal and pyrite war club – from its privileged resting place, and pranced around the dais with a joie de vivre that set a tone of pure joy. The artifact was processed up to every commencement stage by a senior faculty member at The College of Saint Rose from 1977 to 2024. And there you were, Jimmy Fallon. Dancing around with it on the stage. I remember the college president at the time was apoplectic over the unconventional direction that near sacred relic took that day.
But tears were streaming from my eyes. All of it was hysterical.
Recently, I saw that mace again. I was at the Saint Rose exhibit at the Albany Institute of History & Art and there it was -- enclosed in a case. The same mace that Jimmy Fallon danced around with on stage. The laughter came back, and I felt proud of the Saint Rose community.
The feeling of pride returned again recently when you stuck up for your comedian colleague Jimmy Kimmel. You advanced the fight for free speech and for our tentative democracy.
But that sense of satisfaction is also why your recent comments while warming up for Nate Bargatzke at Madison Square Garden stung. You joked about the demise of your alma mater, just a little, but still.
We are hurting here in Albany, Jimmy, and wherever on this globe Saint Rose students have landed. Please remember us fondly and warmly.
Despite the school’s closure, our community has a lot to be proud of. You would have relished the many graduates who made the pilgrimage to the Art Institute to pay their respects, really, to the college they loved and to which they still have an allegiance.
My favorite artifacts in that room were probably the twinkily rhinestone and faux pearl tiaras once worn by the early students crowned as Rose Queen between 1924 and 1964. A plaque described that annual event as a “sunburst of splendor and a fitting finale to the collegiate year.’
Every semester for 15 years our journalism students made the trek to the college’s archives where Maria Kessler McShane tenderly unboxed those crowns to share with then-present day students, the history of their forbearers.
Those same undergrads even studied your “Last Laugh” column in the student newspaper where you were writing about late night comedy way back in October 1994.
When you graduated, you were joined by some 1,868 students who earned degrees and certificates. You became one of the thousands who knew what it meant to go to Saint Rose.
For many of us now, the closure of Saint Rose is kind of a tragedy. Please remember us warmly, the way you did that day at your graduation when you told us:
“This place and this day mean so much to me, and I’m happy for all of us.”
Cailin Brown, a former journalism and media ethics professor, worked locally as a reporter or editor at The Daily Gazette, the Times Union, The Business Review, and The Troy Record.
The views expressed by WAMC’s commentators are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of WAMC or its management.
