President Obama at Morehouse: Spotlight on Valedictorian Betsegaw Tadele

New York (TADIAS) – How would you like to be a valedictorian at a graduation ceremony where the keynote speaker is the President of the United States? That’s exactly the opportunity that Ethiopian American Betsegaw Tadele, a computer science major at Morehouse College, received when President Barack Obama delivered the commencement address last Sunday.



“We will remember this day,” Betsegaw told his classmates in his own well-received speech. “We will be among the few graduates 50 years from now who will remember who was their commencement graduation speaker.”
Invoking President Obama’s book The Audacity of Hope Betsegaw added: “There is no impossible. There is no unbelievable. There is no unachievable, if you have the audacity to hope.”
When it was Obama’s turn to take the stage he joked with Betsegawu: “a skinny guy with a funny name.”
On a more serious note to the graduates Obama said: “Whatever success I have achieved, whatever positions of leadership I’ve held, have depended less on Ivy League degrees or SAT scores or GPAs, and have instead been due to that sense of connection and empathy, the special obligation I felt, as a black man like you, to help those who need it most; people who didn’t have the opportunities that I had — because there, but for the grace of God, go I. I might have been in their shoes. I might have been in prison. I might have been unemployed. I might not have been able to support a family. And that motivates me.”