Bentley University First To Hold Graduation At Fenway Park

WALTHAM, MA —Bentley University's Class of 2021 was the first class of graduates to hold graduation at Fenway Park, according to the school.

The stadium's Jumbotron, which normally shows replays of home runs and strikeouts, played videos of professors congratulating the graduates. The famous scoreboard in left field read "CONGRATS BENTLEY."

Bentley was the first university to hold commencement at Fenway. But it won't be the last. Northeastern, Suffolk, Emerson colleges and dozens of high schools are scheduled to use the space in the coming weeks, the school said in a news release.

Former Bentley President Gloria Larson, the school's first woman president, stood on the home team’s dugout to deliver the commencement address to students and their families in the iconic red Fenway Park seats.

Larson encouraged the graduates to make the world a better place and praised students for the resilience in enduring the worst pandemic in a century that had made them stronger.

“This past year has forever changed our world,” Larson told the graduates. “We are lesser as a nation and lesser as a global community. We’ve experienced an untold loss of human life; felt economic and financial hardship; experienced social unrest and a needed reckoning around race and social justice; and saw a deepening political and social divide at home and abroad. But here today, in spite of or perhaps because of these challenges, we stand stronger. Class of 2021, you are stronger.”

Larson, who was also the first woman to serve as chairman of the board of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, and is the president of the Massachusetts Conference for Women, and is an attorney and public policy expert. She was president of the Waltham-based school from 2007 until 2018.