Wolfe's closing was a call to intellectual independence — and a warning that traditional guides could no longer be trusted. He told the Class of 2000 they wouldn't find many leaders to follow, 'since they now wander helplessly, bemused by the willful ignorance of that bizarre twentieth-century organism, the intellectual.' The charge to the graduates was therefore heavier than usual: 'You're going to have to make the crucial judgments yourselves.' But Wolfe insisted they were equipped for it, having been educated at a university he described as 'a shining lighthouse of independent thought.' The lighthouse image was deliberate — 'lighthouses are built to stand alone and to bear the brunt of the storm, no matter what that storm may be.' It was a tribute to Boston University's willingness to resist intellectual fashion, and a challenge to graduates to do the same.