As Sherr neared her conclusion, she turned to the media landscape the graduates were entering — one increasingly dominated by shout-fests, outlandish opinion, and a widening political divide. Having spent her career as a reporter committed to telling the truth, she was alarmed by the erosion of intellectual rigor in public discourse. She urged the Wellesley graduates not to let the noise hijack their dreams or weaken the critical thinking they'd learned. When people say things that are just plain wrong, she said, fight back — not with outrage, but with facts. Her words carried the weight of a journalist who had spent decades believing that truth was the most powerful weapon a free society possessed.