Speeches & Columns - Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, New York

May 6, 2006

Commencement Address of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton at Buffalo State College

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Photos and video are courtesy of Buffalo State College

Thank you very much. Good morning!

It’s absolutely wonderful to join you today for this graduation ceremony. I want to thank President Howard for her introduction but much more than that I want to thank her for her leadership of this great institution. I want to thank the Chancellor for being here – we are delighted to have Chancellor Ryan heading up the public colleges and universities, the SUNY system, of our state. He’s a former Admiral and he’s getting everything in ship-shape around the higher education community in New York. I particularly am privileged to join the faculty, the administration, the staff, the graduates, the families, the friends who are here today, but I particularly thank the graduating class for this invitation to address you, because it is your day. All these people have gathered to congratulate you, to breathe a big sigh of relief, to feel that it’s a job well done. So first and foremost: Congratulations to the Class of 2006.

Now I know that you have worked so hard to get here and I particularly was impressed by Nicole’s student address. I’ve heard many, many student addresses, Nicole, but the honesty of your expressions of gratitude – your sharing with us your struggle to find your place, to really find your mission here at the college – was very inspirational and moving because it is a time for you to take stock of how far you’ve come. All those exams, all that extra work, all of the anxiety and stress, the financial burden, everything that went in to bringing you to this day.

I hope you will hold on to the sense of possibility and excitement you feel because you’re going now, well-prepared, into a world that is rapidly changing – in which there is no insurance policy that you can take out for a successful, well-lived life. You have to make decisions every single day. How you will feel about yourselves, how you will treat other people, how much you will value the relationships that you have now and those you will build in the future.

And I would not be surprised if there wasn’t some twinge of anxiety that many of you are feeling today. The news can seem awfully foreboding, sometimes even frightening; it’s hard to tell when the evening news ends and the trailer for Mission Impossible 3 begins, because we’re living with a heightened sense of challenge. Now every generation before us has done the same. There are no easy times in which to live – some are better than others – but every generation of Americans has felt some anxiety about the future. But it is up to each of us to determine how we will respond. What I want to convey to you today is the importance of holding on to that feeling of accomplishment, hopefulness, and optimism that brought you to this day – that you have every right to relish now, because you need it and we need it.

In fact, today, I would like to challenge you: there’s work to do for our country and you are, after all, for a few minutes, a captive audience.

You may be just a few minutes from becoming graduates, but I want you to reflect back to when you were children. Maybe playing in your neighborhood, playing on the playground, having somebody dare you – dare you to try something new: run a little faster, climb that tree, hang from that swing set. Now some of those dares you shouldn’t have taken, but others caused you to push yourself a little further, to say “what more am I capable of doing?” And so today I dare you. I dare you to make some audacious decisions.

First and foremost, I dare you to call home every Sunday night. Call your parents, call your family members. They’ve earned it, they’ll miss you, they may even help with the rent from time to time. When I took my daughter to college with my husband, we went to the invocation where the incoming class was being welcomed and this was after I had been in pretty much a maternal meltdown for a couple of weeks thinking about what it would be to drop her off, leave her behind, not see her every day, not talk to her whenever I wanted to. And we went to this invocation and the student speaker stood in front of a large crowd of incoming students and parents and other family members and said, “Now I want to reassure you that your children will miss you – for about 15 minutes in the middle of November.” Well, you know that you wouldn’t be here without the people in these bleachers who stood with you. So keep up with them. Let them know what you’re thinking about and doing as you move into your future.

Second, I dare you to be part of a great American tradition of problem-solving, the “can do” spirit of optimism.

American success has been rooted, not just in leaders who understood the importance of believing in the future and investing in the future, but even more importantly, in citizens who believed the same. Citizens who built the families they came from, who did the work that build the country, who built the businesses, who created the labor unions, who started institutions like this, who served in the Armed Services, who sacrificed today for a better future for all of us.

We can look back at American history and see so many examples of that kind of realistic optimism. It was bipartisan. It cut across all generations.

Think about Thomas Jefferson spending the entire federal budget to buy the Louisiana Purchase.

Think about the generation of New York leaders who built the Erie Canal – something which everybody said could not be done, it was a foolish idea. In fact the governor at the time, who just happened to be named Clinton, was often criticized for building what was called “Clinton’s ditch.” But they persevered and they created an engineering marvel that opened up New York from New York City to Buffalo. It opened up expansion and economic prosperity for the rest of our country.

Think about Abraham Lincoln in the middle of the Civil War when we didn’t even know the outcome, deciding to finish the national railroad system and to begin to build land grant colleges, because he believed that would be an import investment for the future.

There are so many leaders we can look to in history, both past and present, who have given the same commitment, but they couldn’t have done anything if it had not been for citizens who said “yes we want to be part of making that future.”

We can think in our own family examples of that. My own father who came home from World War II after serving in the Navy and built up a very small but successful business for his family. My mother, who never went to college but believed with all of her heart that her children should do that. So each one of us can think about the kind of commitment that led us to this point – those of you who are graduating and those of us who are congratulating you.

Obviously we face big challenges. We face big economic challenges because the world has changed. When I sat where you sat all those years ago, we didn’t worry about China or India taking our jobs; we worried about the Soviet Union provoking a nuclear conflict. Well thankfully that danger has passed, but now we have new dangers to content with and we need a new generation of leaders and citizens – competent, capable of addressing them.

Here at home in Western NY, we’ve got to keep working to turn the economy around. We’ve got to keep making investments that will pay off in a year or 5 years or 10 years. We’ve got to revitalize the City of Buffalo and the surrounding community so we can attract and keep young people who want to make their future right here.

We have so much that we can be positive about in healthcare, but we have to do more make it available to every person – quality, affordable, accessible healthcare should be the right of every American.

We’ve come a long way in building our economy, but now we have to make sure that it doesn’t stumble, because we’re dependent on foreign energy sources. We are smart enough to figure out how to break our addiction to foreign oil. We have done it before. We were the creators of the Manhattan Project, the Apollo Project, we have always responded. We sent the first man to the moon. We can figure out how to use alternative clean energy, not only to fuel our cars, but also to light our homes and our colleges, our businesses, and other places.

And we certainly can meet the challenge of education. Many of you will become teachers and I thank you for that. Now, more than ever, we need first rate teachers who truly believe every child can learn, because we need every single American child to be competitive – to be able to take his or her place in our society. You hear the statistics. You read the stories. Other countries are not standing still. China, India, Europe, other places are investing heavily in science and research – training engineers, technology experts, and others. Well, we have to do the same and we must start with our teachers and their commitment to the education of their children.

Now I hope that you will also continue to contribute to your community. I understand you have a period of time, three days a week, called “Bengal Pause,” a chance to table for your cause, to give back to the community or maybe just make the long, long trek back to the student parking lot. But each and every one of you has the chance to continue that kind of community service – work in a non-profit, work in your religious organization, work to give back – because as President Howard said, you are part of a very important minority in our country: those who do have college degrees.

And to those of us who have been blessed with a good education, as you’ve have, all the way through college, there is a lot of work to be done to help our fellow men and women, and particularly our children.

Those of you who teach, I hope you will consider teaching in underserved, urban and rural schools and when you do that, Buffalo State will be there for you, with the Center in Excellence in Urban and Rural Education. It will continue to help you by linking you up with resources and collaborators so that you can become the best teacher you’re possibly able to become.

And obviously I hope that you will stay here in New York, particularly in Western New York. We need you and there is much work to be done. I’ve been privileged to work with so many leaders and organizations right here in the greater Buffalo area. You know the Burchfield Penney Art Center is building a new gallery on campus. There’s the new ArtSpace building downtown. There’s so much going on. We’ve got the investment in Bioinformatics that is bringing together Roswell Cancer Center and Hauptman Woodward Clinic and the University of Buffalo. American Style Magazine just ranked Buffalo as the number one arts destination in our country. So be a part of building this new future that I’m excited about and very optimistic.

Now, in order to help you do that we have to make sure that we help alleviate the financial burden of going to college and for those of you who want to continue your education. I was proud to support the legislation that Senator Schumer discussed, where we do give a $4000 tax credit to families – and if you didn’t know about it before he mentioned it let me repeat it, so you can take advantage of it if you’re eligible.

But I want to go further than that. I’m going to be introducing a Student Borrower’s Bill of Rights, because I am tired of students being taken advantage of by the financial markets when they have to borrow money to go to college.

I understand that 74 percent of you – 74 percent of Buffalo State students – graduate with loans to repay.

How many of you will graduate with loans to repay? Can we just see a show of hands?

Well, now that is a challenge. I graduated with loans to repay, as did my husband, and I have to tell you, it took us years to pay them off. We paid a little bit, every single month.

But what I want to do is really congratulate you for making this investment, because it is a wise investment. In the long run, these student loans which helped you attend and graduate from this great school will help you with help you with higher earnings and greater freedom of choice in your career. And it is important that you take your responsibilities seriously so that future generations of students can benefit from the chance to borrow money – they don’t have to burden their families. And often times families today – between stagnating incomes, losing benefits like healthcare and pensions, rising gas prices – tuition becomes just too much to try to fit into the family budget. So you have a great opportunity as well as a responsibility and I want to make it easier for you to repay. I want to give you rights that are absolutely enforceable.

Number one, the right to fair, monthly payments that do not exceed a certain percentage of your incomes. And a fair interest rate and fees. Too many students are seeing their costs go up after they think they’ve already budgeted for what they can pay. I want that to stop.

Second, I want you to be able to borrow without exploitation. Too many students are put into a position where they either have access to the money at an exorbitant rate, under very usurious circumstances, or they don’t get any money because most of you don’t have a financial track record. Some of you have had some problems with your credit; you are just learning how to be a responsible borrower and so you are really put into a difficult position.

And, finally, I want to make sure you have access to better information about loans and more information that will give you better options, so you don’t feel strapped by the one or two options that are available.

I’m going to work hard to see that this bill gets passed because it is important to me that we don’t see a further drop-off in the number of students going to college. Because combined with all the borrowing problems, assistance from the federal government is being cut back. The amount of money available to a student today, under the Pell Grant, and other forms of government assistance like the Perkins program and the like, it is actually less – if you counted all the inflation – than it was ten or twenty years ago. And for the average family, it now takes more of your family income to pay for your child to go to college than it did, as a percentage, twenty-five years ago. So although we have all these students going to college, the graduation rate is still about the same as its been for a number of years, and I think one of the reasons is because it is so expensive to start and so expensive to stay in. And many of you have had to work as well as study. I want to make college as universally available and affordable as high school is, and I hope you’ll help me do just that.

I want to end with a story because, you know, when you give a commencement speech, it causes you to think back about events in your own life. And I’ve heard Senator Schumer tell the story about his girlfriend before. It always makes me laugh. And it is a great reminder that a temporary set back may not be a permanent roadblock, unless you make it so, unless you give in, unless you give up.

Now I have encouraged young people, ever since I’ve been an adult, to reach for their dreams, to take the high road, to do what they care about. I’ve said it time and again, whether it was choosing a career, going to school, starting a business, running for office.

Well, back in 1999 when I was thinking of running for Senate, I was very, very ambivalent. I had people urging me to run and I had close friends telling me not to do it, that it would be a very difficult race, that there were many problems inherent, and it would be probably unsuccessful. And so I would go from day to day, “should I or shouldn’t I,” and there would be so many things to consider. No First Lady ever before had ever run for public office. I certainly had never run for office myself. I had been involved for years in supporting not only my husband but other people running for office and I wasn’t even very sure that I would like doing it, or that I would be very good at doing it. So I was looking for some encouragement, something that might say to me, “Okay, this is what you must do. Yes or no, make the decision.”

Well, in March of 1999, I was asked to go to New York City to participate in the unveiling of an HBO special about women in sports. And I know you have some great women and men athletes here at this college. Well, the person I was appearing with was Billy Jean King, the tennis legend. And I’m sure that this will make some of the rest of you, like it made me feel, a little bit anxious – but she last played singles before most of the graduates could talk. So this was a great moment for me because I had been a fan of hers over many years. And it was to promote Title IX and women in sports and what it had meant for expanding opportunities for young women.

We were at a local high school, and all the young women who played basketball and soccer and volleyball were gathered there. And they were under a giant banner that read “Dare to Compete.” And of course the newspapers had been filled with all the speculation about whether I would or whether I wouldn’t run. And a young woman named Sophia, who was the captain of the girl’s basketball team at the school, introduced me.

She finished her introduction. I walked up to the podium. I reached over to shake her hand. As she was much taller than me, she leaned over, and whispered in my ear.

“Dare to compete, Mrs. Clinton. Dare to compete.” Well, soon after she said that, I decided I would.

It was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made and it has been such an extraordinary honor representing New York in these last years in the Senate. But it is also true that often times, the most fearsome competitor we face is ourselves. As we struggle with doubt and anxiety, feelings of inadequacy, and insecurity, fear for the world that often is paralyzing.

We have hard questions to answer, absolutely.

How can we keep our economy strong in a more competitive world?

How do we keep our community safe in a more dangerous world?

How do we protect our values in a rapidly changing world?

But I believe we are up to this challenge. So I dare each of you to compete. You may never run for office, but you may compete with yourself to be the very best teacher you could possibly be. You may never find your name on the front page of a newspaper, but you may compete to be the very best mother and father that you can possibly be. You have these decisions that will come to you throughout your life that only you can answer.

I’m going to do everything I can to try to help provide the sort of support from our government that gives young people like you the chance to compete and realize your dreams that keeps our country on the optimistic course that historically has been what America has stood for.

So as you graduate today, thank your families for guiding you to this point. Thank your professors for showing you and challenging you to maybe see the world in a different way. Thank your friends and for exploring that world with you. And lastly, thank yourself for having the fortitude to stay the course, for being willing to keep going when times got tough and remember what that feeling is like. Cherish this day, but bring the resolve and resilience with you.

Life is not easy for anyone. Sometimes you don’t see the challenges on the outside, but every single one of us has both those and everything that goes on inside as well. Give it your all. Dare to be all you can be. Congratulations, Class of 2006, and God speed you on your journey into the future.

Thank you all very much.


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