Stephen D’Aloisio wants the audience to have fun while listening to his commencement speech. | Photo by Grace DeSanti.
“I absolutely love URI, it’s the best.”
From commencement speaker to Rhody the Ram to orientation leader and everything in between, senior communication studies student Stephen D’Aloisio took advantage of many involvement opportunities during his time at the University of Rhode Island.
D’Aloisio was recently chosen as the 2019 student commencement speaker. He said he decided that he was going to apply last year when he received an email about the University looking for a 2018 commencement speaker.
“I saw the email last year for commencement 2018 and I thought ‘I have to try to do this next year,’” D’Aloisio said. “Fortunately, I was elected in by the Student Senate.”
He said that he is excited to be giving the speech and wants fellow students to be amused by it and have fun listening, instead of having to listen to a story or life lesson.
“I couldn’t think of a better way to end the school year than to go out like this,” D’Aloisio said. “I was an orientation leader for two years and I [was] trusted with being the first face a lot of students saw coming in, so I couldn’t think of a better way to end the year by being the last face some people will see on their way out, especially as representing the entire class.”
With experience as an orientation leader and also doing stand-up comedy at open-mic nights at URI, D’Aloisio said he is not worried about having to give the speech.
“Public speaking is my favorite thing,” D’Aloisio said. “I’ll be nervous in the moment, of course, but right now I’m pretty confident. I do comedy open-mics and I usually bomb at those, so whatever the audience reaction is, I can’t imagine it being worse than not doing well at stand-up.”
The premise of his speech was modeled after commencement speeches D’Aloisio has seen from different celebrities.
“I hope it is entertaining, I hope people are engaged by my speech,” he said. “It has a pretty powerful ending, but I also think I made it pretty funny. I’m really excited to deliver it.”
D’Aloisio said that URI has given him many memories and opportunities. One sentiment he said he always tells his orientation groups is that it is a large group of people spread out over a not-so-large campus, so they will constantly be meeting new people, while also recognizing old faces.
“URI has given me basically everything I could have asked for,” D’Aloisio said. “I love it because it is extremely rewarding, more so than other colleges when you get involved.”
Over the course of four years D’Aloisio took every opportunity to become involved at URI. In addition to being an orientation leader for two years, junior year he became the athletics mascot as well.
“I’ve been on national TV like three or four times,” D’Aloisio said. “I was on the ‘Tonight Show’ for their first-ever Mascot Dunk Contest. I was at March Madness last year, I also worked the Atlantic 10 tournament this year at the Barclays Center.”
He attributes a lot of his successes to the people he has met and worked with during his time at URI.
“I want to thank the athletics department, my friends who helped me put together the speech, I want to thank my parents, they are extremely supportive and the faculty and Dan Graney who helped me during this process,” D’Aloisio said