Biden makes it a commencement to remember

After raining Friday night and Saturday morning the rain stopped as if on cue in Dover, Del. for the 2016 Delaware State University commencement ceremony. As if that wasn’t enough reason for smiles, graduates were also grinning ear to ear because of whom their commencement speaker was, Vice President Joe Biden.

The vice president wasted no time in furthering smiles, cracking a joke right off the bat about the lengthy speech that Sen. Tom Carper (D –Delaware) had right before him.

Biden then went into how this past week during lunch with President Barack Obama, he had teased the president that he was going to the “better” HBCU this weekend.

“(Obama) said ‘well I’m going to Howard’, I said too bad! You’re not going to Del.State, that’s where I’m going,” Biden said.

The vice president also joked about the rising tuition cost, saying parents probably wanted to know why they continue to climb.

“The parents are saying Biden say something to justify this tuition,” Biden joked.

However, Biden put jokes aside eventually to pass on some wisdom to the 2016 graduates.

Biden telling the crowd that they can make a difference, if they’re willing to work for it.

“We have the power, you have the power, your generation to bend history just a little bit,” Biden said.

A message graduates 47 ABC spoke to said will stick with them well after graduation.

“One thing I took away from it was that no matter what you’re going through you can always keep going and push through whatever,” said Tere Crawford, who graduated summa cum laude.

Meanwhile, Shakira Abdul-Rashid, the recipient of the DSU presidential academic award for earning straight A’s her entire collegiate career said she was just thankful Biden took time out of his schedule to make their commencement special.

“You know the vice president is an iconic figure. People all over the world know his name and know who he is and the work that he’s done. So it just meant a lot that he took the time out of his schedule to come talk to us on the day we’re graduating,” Abdul-Rashid said.

For the most part, Biden stayed away from talking about the current presidential race.

However, Carper, when talking about Biden did say, “(Biden) believes that leaders should be building bridges to unite people, not building walls to divide them.”

Biden stayed for the entire degree presentation process, shaking the hand of each degree recipient.