St. Edward’s University’s graduation ceremony, held Saturday at the Frank Erwin Center, featured a combination of the new and old as students readied for the next chapter of their lives.

A total of 649 graduate, undergraduate and New College students were conferred degrees by the university at the two and a half hour ceremony. The ceremony was the first to utilize a social network during graduation and featured Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who spoke about making a difference.McCarrick, who helped to elect Pope Benedict XVI, did not address the ongoing sex abuse scandal rocking the Vatican. McCarrick did, however, take some time in his 15-minute speech to honor Congregation of the Holy Cross founder Fr. Basil Moreau and St. Edward’s founder Edward Sorin, both of whom, he said, persevered through difficult times in the church’s history. He characterized the talk as a continuation of the one he gave at Friday night’s Baccalalureate Mass, where he appeared with Austin Bishop Joe S. Vasquez.McCarrick also touched on modern globalization, a topic that is an integral part of St. Edward’s general education courses.”Our neighbor today is not the person who lives across the street,” McCarrick said. “Our neighbor is the person who lives across the world.”Class valedictorian Mary Hennessy delivered a speech describing the times in which she and her fellow students grew up.”You and I grew up with the Internet, with iPods and 9/11, who earned our degrees in the first decade of the 21st century, and came of age in the post-Cold War world will define the next 100 years,” Hennessy said. “We enter a challenging world. The economy, and, as we are all painfully aware, the job market, is far from recovered. But we also enter a world changed in so many ways for the better.”Following McCarrick’s speech, the graduating students were called one-by-one to shake the hand of university President George Martin and to receive their degree placeholders. The actual diploma will be issued in June.Graduate student Hayley Leanne Bills was the first student to walk the stage, and undergraduate student Karenna Wait was the last.Martin concluded the ceremony with a short speech advising students to strive for more than the message of Google’s motto, “Don’t be evil.””You must counteract evil wherever you find it,” Martin said, exhorting students to aim high. “You must make the impossible possible.”Whrrl takes the stageThe students were then invited to share their pictures and short messages on Whrrl, a social network the university utilized for the ceremony. A slideshow of pictures of the graduates on the floor was played on a screen above the stage as Kool and the Gang’s song “Celebrate Good Times” played on a loop in the background.The photos in the five-minute slide show were mixed with messages from students thanking their families, as well as messages like, “We did it…ballin,” and “This is cool and awkward. Kind of like freshman year. Nice music.”University spokeswoman Mischelle Diaz said that about 100 students used Whrrl. She said university officials have not discussed whether a socially-connected graduation would become an annual event.Diaz said that a few random photos slipped into the slideshow, but added that she  enjoyed Whrrl’s debut at graduation.”I thought it went really well,” Diaz said. “That’s just also judging from the audience reaction. I heard lots of people laughing and talking about it and trying to send a text really quickly so their text could get up there on the live slideshow.”The full slide show, featuring more photos and texts than what was aired at the ceremony, is available on Whrrl.“We truly hope that the graduates enjoyed it, and we were very excited about trying something new by incorporating social media into the graduation,” Diaz said.[email protected]