Emmanuel College Commencement Address Kathleen Kennedy Townsend

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Warren Barber
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1 ,. l. Emmanuel College Commencement Address Kathleen Kennedy Townsend In the lingo of today let us thank our lucky stars. It is a joy to stand here at Emmanuel College today. With Sister Janet, my mother, John Larkin Thompson, and Anna Faith Jones. To celebrate your graduation with you, your parents~ and you~ friends. First I want to congratulate your parents. They've worked hard to reach this day, they have sacrificed to send you to college, they have given advice and they have been patient when you have rejected their advice. They have given you your love and support. Second I want to congratulate the honorary degree winners, John Larkin Thompson and Anna Faith Jones, and my mother. It is especially good to be here with my mother as she receives her honorary degree. She has labored a great deal to be here today,ll times exactly, and that was even before Lamaze was popular! Like many of your parents, she often wondered whether she was doing the right thing, as did I. But what she gave me, aside from 10 brothers and sisters, is deep, enduring and very precious. She gave us the confidence to take risks, a generosity of spirit, the determination to get involved in public life, and to help those who are most in need. It is really good to be with her today. Finally, I want to congratulate you, the Class of You have disciplined yourselves to study, to the art of writing and even to the craft of passing exams. You have succeeded in teaching yourselves, your classmates, and I hear, even some of your professors. Well done. But what makes me most happy in being here today is my hopes for the graduates of Emmanuel, a Catholic women's college. I look at each of you with anticipation. I hope that you will rekindle the spirit of youth that my father called forth 20 years ago. For youthfulness, he said, is not a time of life, but a state of mind. A temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease. It is the spirit which knows the difference between force and reason, it does not accept the failures of tomorrow, it knows that we can clasp the future and mold it to our will. This is the spirit I want to see returned to America. We need this spirit which I know lies within each one of. you. We need it to return again to the heart of the American experience. I accepted your invitation to speak today with soine hesitation. I confess to you that I did not attend my own graduation from Harvard. I thought the speeches would be long and dry, that the speakers would say nothing new, and that there were better ways to spend a beautiful spr ing afternoon. Perhaps I can thank the weather, but I hope that after today, you won't suffer the ~ame feelings. I

2 Emmanuel College will always have a warm place in my memory and my heart. In July 1983, two other women and myself analyzed how women were voting differently than men on issues such as educ.ation, war and peace, and the environment. We thought that political parties should respond to this historical coming of age in the upcoming Presidential elections. And so we formed a group called "Women in Politics." We organized a national voter registration drive, and planned a debate in which all the candidates would participate. Originally we asked Harvard to host the debate, but Harvard turned us down. I don't know if they didn't like women, or politics, or the combination of the two, but Emmanuel College showed foresight and leadership and said yes. You're beginning to see why I skipped my graduation and I'm very glad to be here. All the Democratic candidates came. I remember how pleased we women felt that night as we made what a few months ago had been only a dream, into a historically significant event. We learned how much women could accompl ish if they just had the courage to dare. I wish I could claim the same success in the '84 election, but not only did many of the candidates we support lose, a majority of women voted for the other guy, for the opponent. I offer you this experience as a methaphor for. today. As you celebrate your good fortune with your family and f riends, and recall the pleasure of thoughtful leisure that most people in the world will not have the opportunity to experience, I urge you to remember that your dreaming has just begun. Graduation though, is also a time of fear. Will I ever again make such good friends? I may have succeeded here, but will I do as well with my career? Just as you are uneasy about graduating, so too is an older generation ambivalent about you. Yes, we may admire your youth and vigor, but the spirit of youth is also a threat to age. In the narrow view of things, you may steal our husbands or our boyfriends, (you think I'm kidding, that wasn't a joke!), you may outperform us on a job, you may choose a career with commitment and boldness that highlights our own deference and shortcomings. But more fundamental than this, and the question to which I wish to speak, is my fear that we may have failed to remind you, as my mother so often reminded me, of the power and responsibility of being a woman, a Catholic, and an American. I was taught that one woman could make a difference and that every woman should try. James Madison said that each generation of Americans would have to rededicate themselves to the democratic ideals of liberty, justice and equality. This is the task that 'today falls to you. How shall you make American liberty,. justice, and equality live in your own lives once you leave the comfort of school and family. For instance, how shall these ideals be realized while American public life is threatened by the insidious poison of drug abuse. Drugs destroy families, threaten the safety of our citizens, and corrupt our laws and government. ' 2

3 Our elected officials may have us believe it is only those South American countries that fall victim. Not so. American cities, American police forces, American courts are corrupted by drugs. And the corruption, as we have learned from the actions of Oliver North, and Manuel Noriega, have reached into the White House itseif. There is a well publicized wjust Say Non campaign. But ask any honest police officer in America whether we have made any serious attempts to fight drug trafficking. In high schools, and junior highs, and yes in elementary schools, kids sell drugs which scramble their classmates brains to buy a dress for the prom, or a new pair of Reeboks. Looking good matters more than doing good. When I graduated from College, I ~elieved that by breaking down the barriers to discrimination, by enacting a voting rights act, many of the problems that blacks faced would be solved. Yet the problems that black people face, seem more intractable than ever. Our inner-city schools may not officially discriminate, but they don't teach a whole lot either. Drop out rates in the inner cities in which the vast majority of students are black average 50 percent. Those who graduate aren't learning much. Fifty percent of the high school graduates in one city could not identify the United States on the map of the world. What price are we paying for this lacking the courage to stop the drug trade? A short while ago, the Wall Street Journal described the Henry Horner Housing project in Chicago. A mother in the project told of a life of daily terror. The project is overrun by gangs, the gangs recruit children. If a child refuses,.as one 8 year old did, he was shot, killed, and his body placed on the elevator to serve as a warning to others not to resist. The police, in fear, never came. The day after the story ran, the Chicago Housing Authority called the woman, Why? To address the wrong? To offer pol ice protection? To clean house? No. They called to reprimand her for speaking to a reporter. Some say wrongly that our national problems are technical ones requiring no more than proper expertise, but let us not deceive ourselves. How to stop drugs, or to improve the safety and education in our ghetto schools is not a question of clever programs, but of will and moral courage. Cleverness is not enough. And even the impressive gains of our science, technology.., and ingenuity which bring wealth on a scale and quality never before imagined generate decay if we lack moral courage. The Midwest plant that creates power to run factories, ~ comfortable life for communities and families, also emits poisonous particles that destroy our spruce forests, kill all the life i~ the lakes in the Adirondacks and White Mountains, and corrode our national monuments. The cars that bring us to work emit gasses that warm the atmosphere vastly altering the cycle~ for farming. The ~ microbiology that provides an infertile wife and husband with an opportunity to create a child, at least partially out of their 3

4 own genes, shapes a morality that accepts a woman's decision to take $10,000 to bear a child and give it away. What can we tell ourselves when the practice of using fetal tissue becomes routine when we creat~ life only to kill it. I need not go on, you are smart, you know the issues, or you know where to find them. The real question is what is our role. It would be easier to think these questions are of little concern to us, but that is not a choice. It is left only to God and angels to be onlookers. Emmanuel College teaches an ethic of service and political participation. You are renowned for the contributions you have made as students. You have ladled out stew in the soup kitchens, you have folded sheets in shelters for the homeless, you have lobbied at the State House, and you have protested the narrow politics at tbe White House. Today I ask you to continue. In the next year you wi 11 meet a wor Id which is not as wi 11 ing to encourage service or innovation or different views. Remember, Emmanuel had the debate, not Harvard. America needs your example, and your voice. What.we need now in this nation of ours, is what I hope you offer. What we need is the strength you have taken from your parents and made your own. We need your determination to hold yourself to high ideals, your belief that there is a right and wrong, we need your concern for others, your sense of service, your commitment to doing what is just. We need your courage to speak out. In the next few months, you may take a vacation, you may go to the beach or travel. You have the time then, the time for reflect i'on, to look back on these four years and also to plan what you can do in the next four years, or at least during the next one year. There are actions we can take, you have enormous energy, you can be bold and take risks. You can demand that the world be shaped anew. There is much to be done; you can tutor, you can help a man learn how to to count the correct change at a 7-11, or teach a woman to address an envelope. You can serve as a mentor to an eighth grader and listen as she describes how the teacher liked her paper, or what she did on Saturday night, or how her mother did not corne horne for two days. You may show that somebody cares, and you may explain why it is a bad idea for her to get pregnant. You have found your neighbor and rather than pass her by, you have helped. And perhaps during the next year that is the best you can do and the most that can be done, but it is not enough. For instance, your experience with teaching a single person may teach you that more tutors are needed. You can encourage your friends and colleagues then to get involved. Now this could be embarassing or difficult. You may be called a Wgoody-goody or be told that that is just traditional women's work, or you may be accused of making judgements of how others should spend their time. But persist. Remember the sermon on the mount, the 'i parable of the good samaritan. Or you may understand that the. money spent on an inner-city schools where the need is greatest 4

is significantly less than the money spent on th,e schools in the suburbs. This knowledge challenges you to demand better answers from our politicians and to get involved in politic~.

5 is significantly less than the money spent on th,e schools in the suburbs. This knowledge challenges you to demand better answers from our politicians and to get involved in politic~. That too could be embarrasing or difficult. You may be told that politics is a dirty business, or better suited for men who 'have the proper ' demeanor and voice. You may fear the temptation to compromise your ideals and the victory of money ov~r principles. Again persist.,.'- In the ancient democracy of Athens, the greek word for those who did not involve themselves in public affairs was "idiot." If you are going to live up to the promise of democracy in Amer ica, if we are really going to prove the life of so many in our nation, then we cannot be idiots. We must be there when the deals are made, when the money is divided, we must pay attention to details, and read the budgets. Thomas Jefferson said, "A period of serv ice is due from each Amer ican in the I ine that he can be most useful." This challenges us. Jefferson knew that the words of the Declaration and the Constitution painted a vision of a nation which was as yet imperfectly realized. Each generation then, is asked not just how we can build the most comfortable life for ourselves, but what contribution we can make to create one free and equal people. Today we look to you. Escele wrote, "Life is an adventure, perilous indeed, but man is no made for safe havens. n Well, neither are women. As you leave here today hold within you the promise of liberty, justi ce and equality. Summon the courage to dare, and keep alive within you the spirit of youth. Congr atul ations. 5

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