FRANKLIN & MARSHALL COLLEGE
COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS
Judy Woodruff
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Lancaster, PA
Thank you.
President John Fry, trustees, faculty, friends, parents and above all, the 472 graduates of the Franklin & Marshall class of 2010. Thank you for honoring me today.
Congratulations to the other Honorary Degree recipients: Ann Barshinger, Dale Frey, and Mary Patterson "Pat" McPherson.
What great pleasure it is to be at this special college with such a distinguished 223 year history. I feel several bonds with you: my brother in law and his family are residents of Lancaster, where for more than thirty years he has been a family physician.
I went to Duke University, which affords me several more ties to F & M.
Your about-to-be Interim President John Burness and I are dear friends from our Duke days for many years.
He steps into huge shoes; John Fry has not only presided over the impressive physical growth of this institution, everyone tells me, he has been such a student-centric President, vastly expanding student aid, and taking a genuine interest in your experiences. Congratulations Dr. Fry and best wishes in your new journey at Drexel.
Those of you returning next year will love John Burness; there aren’t many who know or care more about higher education in this country than John. The only admonition his fabulous wife Anne gave him, was, “President or not, you're still taking out the trash.”
I have a connection with Patti Harris, your esteemed trustee and alumna, and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's left hand, right hand, eyes and ears.
I’m a long time friend of another F & M trustee, Ken Duberstein, President Ronald Reagan's chief of staff. And I'm a fan of former Republican party chair Ken Mehlman, ex-Democratic congressman Bill Gray and esteemed Washington lawyer Stan Brand. Goldman Sachs would die for such prestigious Washington connections.
It is presumptuous for an outsider to land on a college campus, and instantly tell its graduates what to expect as they move to the next chapter of their lives. So I spoke with a handful of you seniors, to try to get a better understanding of who you are, and what Franklin and Marshall has meant to you.
The first thing I learned, from Jerry Upright, is that you are an unusually close class. Whether in the library, where you spent most of your time, right? –- or at Hildy’s, where you may have dropped by once or twice, or cheering on the Diplomats’ -- the women’s lacrosse team - Go Dips! -- and the basketball and football teams, you have hung together; you’ve made friends for a lifetime.
Senior Steve Kielt said you are the first class to see fully “the effects of the John Fry presidency.” Steve described the new Barshinger Life Sciences and Philosophy Building, and the Patricia E. Harris Center for Business, Government and Public Policy. Even more than new and renovated buildings, though, Steve said you’ve been fortunate to see “the vision of F and M in the future.”
When I asked the four students what was it about F and M that most shaped them, there was a commonality to the responses. The relationships, even friendships, you formed with your professors, not possible at many schools. Lauren Conheeney told me as a freshman, she took a foundation course with Dean Hammer, head of the Government department. Professor Hammer inspired her to think differently about her college education: to imagine that she could combine government with chemistry and biology, that she could get a liberal arts education as rich preparation for a career in the health sciences.
Steve Kielt credits David Schuyler in the American Studies Department, in his Freshman writing seminar, with being, as he describes it, “an over the top kind of guy.” When Steve wasn’t sure he was going to make it at F and M, Professor Schuyler persuaded him otherwise.
Yet another senior, Jenna Boggiano, told me about a history professor, Louise Stevenson, who frequently took time to meet with her outside class: “She helped me figure out what I want to do next year, and where I want to go.”
You have been well prepared for what lies ahead. This nourishment and support are vital, as you face challenges.
A new survey out this week, done for the Panetta Institute in California, indicates the confidence students across the nation have in finding an acceptable job after graduation, is the lowest in the ten year history of the survey. You F and M graduates are no exception -- you told me you know this is a tough job market you’re entering: many of you will be moving back home with mom and dad. I know from personal experience they are anxious to have you back under their roof, and observing the old curfews!
While you’ve been in class the past few years, America has gone through the most wrenching economic trauma of the past seven decades; the job market IS tough. Three or four years ago F and M graduates competed with graduates of Gettysburg or Princeton or Dickenson. Today the class of 2010 faces a source of new competition: the class of 2009. The national jobless rate is 9.9%; for those aged 20 to 24, it's closer to 40%.
Three of the four students I spoke with over the past couple weeks still have not found a job; the fourth is headed to graduate school. This puts you squarely in line with students elsewhere. Last year only 519 of Harvard's 1600 graduating seniors had a job as they accepted their degree, down from 815 a year before.
So these are difficult times, in some ways much harder than those faced by your parents, especially for those of you who are leaving college with a worrisome financial debt.
At the same time, however, there are opportunities that didn't exist in the fondest dreams of your Moms and Dads or those of the class of 2000. Options for young Americans are so much more plentiful: volunteer activities, travel, a smaller global marketplace, interim internships where you can make a real difference, and the exploding field of social entrepreneurship.
These social entrepreneurs embody the words that still echo of John F. Kennedy a half century ago: "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."
Public service is part of it; it's also mentoring underprivileged kids, helping senior citizens cope, filling the many needs for assistance of those with disabilities. It was the late Hubert H. Humphrey who said the moral test of a society is "how it treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; those who are in the shadows of life; the sick, the needy and the handicapped."
You graduates know this already – you’ve done volunteer work here in the Lancaster area, and beyond, in medicine, human rights, with young children, and Haiti relief. You who’ve participated in the Ware Institute especially appreciate the wisdom of Humphrey’s observation.
If you embark on a career of teaching or working with the disadvantaged or public service, there is the promise of a lifetime of fulfillment and satisfaction. But if this is only a way station, as this job market self-corrects, which it always does, seize and revel in that chance, that opportunity.
An advertising executive recently observed that young people today have "a million possibilities in the palm of their hands." Every day you locate these on the Internet.
So rather than lament the world you enter, I envy you; we didn't have those places, we didn’t have the internet; we didn't know about those social entrepreneurial opportunities.
When I was a nervous graduate at Duke about to work as the news department secretary for an Atlanta TV station, because they didn't hire women as reporters in those days, my horizons were far more limited.
You have enjoyed a memorable four years at Franklin and Marshall. As great as it has been, however, ignore those who say these are the best years of life. Those are ahead of you; for some it will be fame or financial rewards. But starting tomorrow, for all of you there are these splendid opportunities to make a difference, to improve someone's life.
And an admonition: I attended another commencement last weekend where my son graduated. The speaker noted that for all of the virtues of more options and choices, that too many of our lives, and especially lives of your Millenial generation, center less on the public square where, the great philosopher, Hannah Arendt, said "the central concern of all citizens is to talk with each other" and more on what you might call the “tribal square,” where we mostly encounter people who think and look and act just like us.
We too much turn to news outlets or to blogs that we agree with, ignoring those that we don’t; communicate on our I phones and blackberries, text and tweet, with our smaller circle of usually like-minded friends. And whether those are social, professional or even shopping experiences, they are marked by too much uniformity.
Whatever you do in the years ahead, seek out and spend some time with those who are different, and bring different backgrounds and perspectives. Read or watch news sites with which you don’t agree. Enlist your great curiosity about something foreign, a different religion, different music, art or literature. Celebrate diversity; it’ll make you a better person and richer, in the spiritual sense.
Finally, I urge you to stay close to your family, and respect their wisdom. I know from my reporting and researching your generation, you are closer to your parents than any young generation before you. Even as you branch out, and create new pathways, heed those who most care about you.
Two weeks ago, I interviewed a young man who grew up in the inner city, and went on to graduate with honors from Johns Hopkins, win a Rhodes Scholarship, serve as an Army officer in Afghanistan and launch a successful career on Wall Street. He has just written a book about another young man who grew up in the same Baltimore neighborhood, coincidentally with the same name, Wes Moore, who is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole, for murder. The Wes Moore I talked with, tried to figure out why HIS life has so far turned out one way, while “The OTHER Wes Moore,” the name of the book, made unforgivable decisions at a young age that have left him a life of despair and isolation. A crucial factor, he concluded, was that his mother, at an early age, encouraged and pushed him, leading him to believe he could pursue and achieve his dreams. The other Wes Moore didn't have that foundation.
When I interviewed Wes Moore, he told me was struck by how blurry the line is between the two, with expectations making a critical difference. “If you are expected to do well in school, you will, he said. If you are expected to graduate, you will. And if you are expected to sell drugs on the street corner, you will do that.”
For you graduates, there are ambitious and noble expectations. Don't assume anything is beyond your reach, chase your dreams. Know that Franklin and Marshall, in the words of Jenna Boggiano, has "prepared me for what I face in the future." And realize your family prepared you for this formative experience at this great school.
Congratulations on this day of celebration and your journey ahead to make a difference. Thank you.