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Hillary Rodham Clinton
Remarks to Wellesley College Graduating Class of 1992
Friday, May 29, 1992
Boston, MA
President Keohane, distinguished trustees, faculty,
students, parents, friends, and, most of all, honored graduates of
the Class of 1992. This is my second chance to speak from
this podium. The first was 23 years ago, when I was a graduating
senior. My classmates selected me to address them as the first
Wellesley student ever to speak at a commencement. I can't
claim that 1969 speech as my own; it reflected the hopes, values
and aspirations of the women in my graduating class. It was full
of the uncompromising language you only write when you're 21. But
it's uncanny the degree to which those same hopes, values and
aspirations have shaped my adulthood. We passionately
rejected the notion of limitations on our abilities to make the
world a better place for everyone. We saw a gap between our
expectations and realities, and we were inspired, in large part by
our Wellesley education, to bridge that gap. On behalf of my class
in 1969, I said, "The challenge now is to practice politics as the
art of making what appears to be impossible, possible." That is
the challenge of politics, especially in today's far more cynical
climate. The aspiration I referred to then was "the struggle
for an integrated life ... in an atmosphere of ... trust and
respect." What I meant by that was a life that combines personal
fulfillment in love and work with fulfilling responsibility to the
larger community. A life that balances family, work and service
throughout life. It is not a static concept, but a constant
journey. When the ceremonies and hoop-la of my graduation
were over, I commenced by adult life by heading straight for Lake
Waban. Now, as you all know, swimming in the lake other than at
the beach is not allowed. But it was one of my favorite rules to
break. I stripped down to my swimsuit, took off my coke-bottle
glasses, laid them carefully on top of my clothes on the ground,
and waded in off Tupelo Point. While I was happily
paddling around, feeling relieved that I had survived the day, a
security guard came by on his rounds, picked up my clothes from the
shore and carried them off. He also took my glasses. Blind as a
bat, I had to feel my way back to my room at Davis. I'm
just glad that picture hasn't come back to haunt me. You can
imagine the captions: "Girl offers vision to classmates and then
loses her own. " Or, the tabloids might have run something like:
"Girl swimming, blinded by aliens after seeing Elvis."
While medical technology has allowed me to replace those glasses
with contact lenses, I hope my vision today is clearer for another
reason: the clarifying perspective of experience. The opportunity
to share that experience with you today is a privilege and a kind
of homecoming. Wellesley nurtured, challenged and guided me;
it instilled in me not just knowledge, but a reserve of sustaining
values. I also made friends who are still my closest friends today.
When I arrived as a freshman in 1965 from my "Ozzie and
Harriet" suburb of Chicago, both the college and the country were
going through a period of rapid, sometimes tumultuous change. My
classmates and I felt challenged and, in turn, challenged the
college from the moment we arrived. Nothing was taken for granted.
Our Vil Juniors despaired of us green-beanied '69ers because we
couldn't even agree on an appropriate, politically correct cheer.
To this day when we attend reunions, you can hear us cry: "1-9-6-9
Wellesley Rah, one more year, still no cheer." There often
seemed little to cheer about. We grew up in a decade dominated by
dreams and disillusionments. Dreams of the civil rights movement,
of the Peace Corps, of the space program. Disillusionments starting
with President Kennedy's assassination, accelerated by the divisive
war in Vietnam, and the deadly mixture of poverty, racism, and
despair that burst into flames in the hearts of some cities and
which is still burning today. A decade when speeches like "I Have
a Dream" were followed by songs like "The Day the Music Died."
I was here on campus when Martin Luther King was murdered. My
friends and I put on black armbands and went into Boston to march
in anger and pain -- feeling much as many of you did after the
acquittals in the Rodney King case. Much changed - and much
of it for the better - but much has also stayed the same, or at
least not changed as fast or as irrevocably as we might have hoped.
Each new generation takes us into new territory. But, while
change is certain, progress is not. Change is the law of nature;
progress is the challenge of both a life and a society. Describing
an integrated life is easier than achieving one. What better
place than to speak integrating the strands of women's lives than
Wellesley, a college that not only vindicates the proposition that
there is still an essential place for an all-women's college, but
which defines its mission as seeking "to educate women who will
make a difference in the world." And what better time to
speak than in the spring of 1992, when women's special concerns are
so much in the news as real women - and fictional television
characters - seek to strike a balance in their lives that is right
for them. I've traveled all over American, talking and
listening to women who are: struggling to raise their children and
somehow make ends meet; battling against the persistent
discrimination that still limits their opportunities for pay and
promotion; bumping up against the glass ceiling; watching the
insurance premiums increase; coping with inadequate or non-existent
child support payments; existing on shrinking welfare payments with
no available jobs in sight; anguishing over the prospect that
abortions will be criminalized again. We also talk about our
shared values as women and mothers, about our common desire to
educate our children, to be sure they receive the health care they
need, to protect them from the escalating violence in our streets.
We worry about our children - something mothers do particularly
well. Women who pack lunch for their kids, or take the
early bus to work, or stay out late at the PTA or spend every spare
minute taking care of aging parents don't need lectures from
Washington about values. We don't need to hear about an idealized
world that never was as righteous or carefree as some would like to
think. We need understanding and a helping hand to solve our own
problems. We're doing the best we can to find the right balance in
our lives. For me, the elements of that balance are family,
work and service. First, your personal relationships. When
all is said and done, it is the people in your life and the
friendships you form and the commitments you maintain that give
shape to that life. Your friends and your neighbors, the people at
work, at your church, all those who touch your daily lives. And if
you choose, a marriage filled with love and respect. When I stood
here before, I could never have predicted - much less believed that
I would fall in love with Bill Clinton and follow my heart to
Arkansas. But I'm very glad I had the courage to make that choice.
Second, your work. For some of you, that may overlap with
your contribution to the community. For some of you, the future
might not include work outside the home (and I don't mean
involuntary unemployment) but most of you will at some point in
your life work for pay, maybe in jobs that used to be off-limits
for women. You may choose to be a corporate executive or a rocket
scientist, you may choose to run for public office, you may choose
to stay home and raise you children - you can now make any or all
of these choices for the work in your life. Third, your
service. As students, we debated passionately what responsibility
each individual has for the larger society and just what the
College's Latin motto - "Not to be ministered unto, but to
minister" - actually meant. The most eloquent explanation I have
found of what I believe now and what I argued then is from Vaclav
Havel, the playwright and first freely- elected President of
Czechoslovakia. In a letter from prison to his wife, Olga, he
wrote: "Everything meaningful in life is distinguished by a
certain transcendence of human existence - beyond the limits of
mere 'self-care' - toward other people, toward society, toward the
world ... Only by looking outward, by caring for things that, in
terms of pure survival, you needn't bother with at all ... and by
throwing yourself over and over again into the tumult of the world,
with the intention of making your voice count - only thus will you
really become a person." I first recognized what I cared
most while I was in law school where I worked with children at the
Yale New Haven Hospital and Child Study Center and represented
children through legal services. And where during my first summer
I worked for the Children's Defense Fund. My experiences gave
voice to deep feelings about what children deserved from their
families and government. I discovered that I wanted my voice count
for children. Some of you may have already had such a
life-shaping experience; for many it lies ahead. Learn to
recognize it and nurture it when it occurs. Because my
concern is making children count, I hope you will indulge me as I
tell you why. The American Dream is an intergenerational compact.
Or, as some once said, one generation is supposed to leave the key
under the mat for the next. We repay our parents for their love in
the love we give our children - and we repay our society for the
opportunities we are given by expanding the opportunities granted
others. That's the way it's supposed to work. You know too well
that it is not. Too many of our children are being impoverished
financially, socially and spiritually. The shrinking of their
futures ultimately diminishes us all. Whether you end up having
children of your own or not, I hope you will recognize the need for
a sensible national family policy that reverses the neglect of our
children. If you have children, you will owe the highest
duty to them and will confront your biggest challenges as parents.
If, like me at your age, you now know little (and maybe care less)
about the mysteries of good parenting, I can promise you there is
nothing like on-the-job-training. I remember one very long night
when my daughter, Chelsea, was about four weeks old and crying
inconsolably. Nothing from the courses in my political science
major seemed to help. Finally, I said, "Chelsea, you've never
been a baby before and I've never been a mother before, we're going
to have to help each other get though this together." So far, we
have. For Bill and me, she has been the great joy of our life.
Watching her grow and flourish has given greater urgency to the
task of helping all children. There are as many ways of
helping children. You can do it through your own personal lives by
being dedicated, loving parents. You can do it in medicine or
music, social work or education, business or government service,
by making policy or making cookies. It is a false choice to
tell women - or men for that matter - that we must choose between
caring for ourselves and our own families or caring for the larger
family of humanity. In their recent Pastoral Letter,
"Putting Children and Families First," the National Conference of
Catholic Bishops captured this essential interplay of private and
public roles: "No government can love a child and no policy can
substitute for a family's care," the Bishops wrote, "government can
either support or undermine families ... there has been an
unfortunate, unnecessary and unreal ... polarization in discussions
of how best to help families ... the undeniable fact is that our
children's future is shaped both by the values of their parents and
the policies of our nation." As my husband says, "Family
values alone won't feed a hungry child. And material security
cannot provide a moral compass. We need both." Forty-five
years ago, the biggest threat to our country came from the other
side of the Iron Curtain; from the nuclear weapons that could wipe
out the entire plant. While you were here at Wellesley, that
threat ended. Today, our greatest national threat comes not
from some external Evil Empire, but from our own internal
Indifference Empire that tolerates splintered families, unparented
children, embattled schools, and pervasive poverty, racism, and
violence. Not for one more year can our country think of
children as some asterisk on our national agenda. How we treat our
children should be front and center of our national agenda, or it
won't matter what else is on that agenda. My plea is that
you not only nurture the values that will determine the choices you
make in your personal lives, but also insist on policies with those
values to nurture our nation's children. "But really
Hillary," many of you may be saying to yourselves, "I've got to pay
off my student loans. I can't even find a good job, let alone
someone to love. How am I going to worry about the world? Our
generation has fewer dreams, fewer illusions than yours."
And I hear you. As women today, you face tough choices. You know
the rules are basically as follows: If you don't get married,
you're abnormal. If you get married but don't have children, you're
a selfish yuppie. If you get married and have children, but work
outside the home, you're a bad mother. If you get married and have
children, but stay home, you've wasted your education. And if you
don't get married, but have children and work outside the home as
a fictional newscaster, then you're in trouble with Dan Quayle. So
you see, if you listen to all the people who make these rules, you
might conclude that the safest course of action is just to take
your diploma and crawl under your bed. But let me propose an
alternative. Hold onto your dreams. Take up the challenge of
forging an identity that transcends yourself. Transcend yourself
and you will find yourself. Care about something you needn't
bother with at all. Throw yourself into the world and make your
voice count. Whether you make your voice count for children
or for another cause, enjoy your life's journey. There is no dress
rehearsal for life and you may have to ad lib your way through each
scene. The only way to prepare is to do what you have done: get
the best possible education; continue to learn from literature,
scripture and history, to understand the human experience as best
you can so that you have guidepost charting the terrain toward
whatever decisions are right for you. I want you to remember
this day and remember how much more you have in common with each
other than with the people who are trying to divide you. And I
want you to stand together then as you stand together now;
beautiful, brave, invincible. Congratulations to each of you.
Look forward to and welcome the challenges ahead.