It was probably appropriate that Juliet Beni woke up early on graduation day — 5:37 without an alarm.
“I never get up that early,” Beni said.
But when it comes to her education, the 19-year-old psychology student has been way early for everything. She started Riverside City College at age 8. And on Saturday, June 16, she became the youngest UCR student in the past 30 years — and possibly ever — to earn a PhD.
Beni was one of 5,061 students receiving degrees from UCR this spring. The campus held seven commencement exercises. Besides psychology majors, Saturday morning’s ceremony included sociology, neuroscience, religious and women’s studies majors. Thousands of family members and friends crowded the campus lawn east of the central bell tower to hear their students’ names read.
Students began lining up at 7 a.m., an hour before commencement began.
Beni, jostling among them, said she was as excited about entering the UCR/UCLA joint medical school program this fall as she was to be graduating. She also said she appreciated her college experience.
“It’s an honor to be supported by the UCR community this way,” she said, “the fact that they were willing to accommodate someone who was a little different.”
The campus is known for its diversity, which was clearly evidenced by the students surrounding Beni.
Megan Ueunten, 22, of Torrance, said she appreciated that environment.
“I went to a small Catholic high school,” Ueunten said. “This opened my eyes to how different people are.”
Waiting with her classmates to receive her bachelor’s degree in psychology, Ueunten said she wasn’t sure when she arrived at UCR that she would make it this far.
“The transition from high school to college was really hard,” she said. “It stressed me out the first year. But then I got into a groove. You just have to believe you can do it.”
Chancellor Timothy White echoed that sentiment in his address to the graduates during the commencement ceremony. He quoted UCR professor and California Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera.
“To live the promise,” White said, “we must be the promise. Continue to live your promise.”
If Beni represented the school’s youngest doctoral student, the commencement’s keynote speaker fell on the other side of that spectrum.
Charles Young received his bachelor’s degree in political science from UCR in 1955, the first year the campus awarded degrees. He went on to graduate school at UCLA, eventually teaching there and at UC Davis before being named chancellor of UCLA in 1968.
Young told the graduates he enrolled the year the school opened in 1954, admitting 150 students.
“I had several classes of me on one side and a faculty member on the other side,” Young said. “I and my fellow students chose the mascot of the Highlander.”
The kilted Scotsman beat out the Coatimundi.
He told the students they were “uniquely qualified to defend your alma mater” from the current societal notion that “a college education is an individual and not a common good. Quality education at all levels is what made this nation what it became in the post-war years, and it depends on that same resilience now.”
Perhaps the most emotional moment of the commencement came at the start of the presentation of baccalaureate degrees when the family of Angelique DeLeon received her posthumous degree. DeLeon was killed in a snowboarding accident in November.
A tearful Chancellor White embraced them on stage as the audience erupted in applause.