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Transcript and audio courtesy of the University

Thank you so very much. I am absolutely delighted and honored to be here with all of you for this commencement. I want to thank Dr. Steinberg for this honorary degree. I want to thank my longtime friend and longtime member of the board here, Roger Tilles. I want to thank all of you associated with this great university. And I especially want to thank the faculty, the administration, but most of all I am here to say congratulations to the class of 2006. You have worked hard to get here. You have studied, you have taken exams, you have spent four sometimes more years getting your bachelors degrees. Many of you are getting a graduate degree after even more years. You have an astonishing number of degree programs. C.W. Post offers some 235 degree programs and so represented in this audience of graduates are so many different talents and experiences and I am so proud to be among the very first to wish you well as you leave this beautiful campus as you travel in a hundred a thousand different directions and as each of you works hard to hold onto the sense of possibility and achievement that you have so richly deserved and earned.

Yet I know that just as the wonderful speech by the valedictorian Tara reminded us, that all of us at every step along the way have to overcome not only external challenges and there are many, but the internal voices of doubt, anxiety, insecurity. And as we go out in the world today it can sometimes seem as you read the papers, watch the news downright frightening. It's hard to tell when the evening news has ended and the latest episode of 24 has begun. In truth though you are not the first generation to feel anxious about the future nor do I predict will you be the last. surrounding you in this enormous crowd which is swelled by the thousands in the Tilles Center are those that are here with pride and some relief that this day has come.

And I'd like to begin by telling you a short story about my own mother because today is mother's day and how sometimes you need encouragement to overcome those doubts. When I went to college I felt very anxious. My mother had never gone to college and she very much wanted me to do that. I felt lonely and overwhelmed I was convinced every other student I met was much smarter and deserved to be there more than I did. I had every doubt you can list and I really struggled at first. The courses were hard. I was having trouble with a bunch of them. Some I have never gotten over having trouble with and I often had discouraging comments from my professors. I remember a French professor who tried to let me down gently by saying, “Mademoiselle, your talents lie elsewhere.” A month after school started I called home collect as some of the people in the audience remember. That was the way you called home and sometimes your parents accepted the call and sometimes they didn't depending on how the family budget was doing that month. So I called collect and I told my parents I wanted to leave. I just couldn't see myself sticking it out. I didn't think that college maybe was for me or maybe this college wasn't for me. My poor father didn't know what to say. He'd gone to college on a football scholarship and pretty much played football all the way through college. He never ran in to any French professor who said it wasn't his talent. So he just stayed silent on the phone and passed it to my mother and my mother said, “No, you can't quit. You've got to see though what you started.” And even though my mother had cried in the back seat of our car all the way on the drive to college, she made it clear to me that I had to overcome those doubts. That I couldn't give up. And so I very regrettably said, “Alright, but if I don't like it at the end of the year, can I come home?” And my mother said, “Well, we'll talk about it then. But now I expect you to do your very best and just get through every day.”

To this day, my mother, thankfully who is still with me, is a source of strength and encouragement, unconditional love and kindness and I know that there are a lot of parents and grandparents in this audience today who may have had similar conversations. When you hit that first obstacle when you felt you just weren't good enough and somebody said keep going. When I think back all the years ago to when I started college, it seems like a lot has changed in our world and indeed it has. Just thinking of the technology we take for granted today, it was a different world completely. But one thing doesn't change and that is the support we get from those closest to us. And another thing that doesn't change is that now it really is up to each of you to chart your own future. To make the decisions about what you will do and the contributions you will make. I hope you will hold onto your optimism and I hope you will also stretch yourself and I want to challenge you to do just that.

Remember years and years ago when you were on a playground and somebody would say I dare you? Well, sometimes there were dares that you shouldn't have taken, but sometimes you took it and you were surprised because you could do it. You actually did something you a minute before were afraid you'd never able to do. It's like riding a bike. It seems so terrifying at first and then slowly, but surely you take the risk and you're on a bike. Well in life, you're going to have to dare yourself to keep going on lots of occasions and I dare you to remain optimistic no matter what the evidence to the contrary might be. Sometimes it's hard to hold onto that sense of possibility, but if you don't the alternative is one that holds out darkness, despair, hopelessness and what has always set America apart is that undying can-do spirit.

You know, a great president Franklin Roosevelt reminded a generation of our grandparents or great grandparents they had nothing to fear but fear itself at a time when there was a lot to be afraid of. People were destitute there was no work in the country. War was looming on the horizon across the ocean. And he cockily said, “You have nothing to fear, but fear itself.” We've had leaders who've inspired that in us. When President Kennedy said we're going send a man to the moon by the end of the decade, there were people who though to themselves, “That's impossible, we can't do that.” We did it. In large ways and small, we face challenges every single day. Yes, we have some big challenges facing our country right now. How do we keep our economy competitive and create good jobs? How do we keep Long Island attractive and able to give you a place to live you can afford and a job that will keep you here? How do we protect our country, our state and our city from the threats the real dangers that exist in the world today? How do we hold onto our values when everything seems to be changing so rapidly? Well one way is to stay committed to the future, to work with people to find answers to difficult problems. To go out and believe we can achieve great things. Sometimes against the odds.

Your team is the Pioneers, after all. A new generation of young pioneers making a difference. New technology that hasn't even been dreamed of, let alone invented. Taking on new responsibilities and I hope you will stay here on Long Island . I hope you will stay in New York . I hope you will do everything you can to make this a place that is still vibrant and growing and I pledge to you I will do what I can to make Long Island affordable. A place to live, work and raise a family for generations to come. You know, this beautiful place, this long island has almost become a victim of its own success. Housing prices, taxes, the cost of living. We have to make sure that our young people as well as our teachers, our police officers, our firefighters have a place to live where they want to be. Some of you will go far from here and you will remember this campus and the entire university with great appreciation I hope because you are so well equipped now. And never forget that even though most of the people you know, that you socialize with, that you're friends with are more than likely college graduates, that is not true of the vast majority of Americans yet. So you have been given a gift and with it comes a responsibility.

Now as a mother myself, I'm anxious about the future, but I'm optimistic at the same time. I have the same concerns that my mother had for me and my brothers when we were growing up and going out into the world. But we know so much more now than was known before. You can't get away from what's happening in the world. The world it's said has shrunk more, become flat. We're connected in ways we never were before. So how do we deal with these new challenges? Well, the other day I was speaking about my concerns for the future. And I said that I wanted to make sure that young people would work hard because we're in competition with jobs. When I was sitting where you are now, I didn't have to worry about competition from China or India . That was just the furthest thing from my mind. There were no global pressures like you will face as you mark your own way. And I said, you know, we need to get every young person to really get a sense of commitment and to work hard. Well, my daughter heard that I said that and she called and said, “Mom I do work hard and my friends work hard.” And I said, “I know that. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to convey any impression that you don't work hard. I just want to set the bar high because we are in a competition for the future.” We can't take anybody or anything for granted.

Everyday when I meet with people around our state I hear about jobs being outsourced to china or India . And these are not jobs of factory workers, these are jobs of engineers and jobs of radiologists. You can go to a hospital here on Long Island as I did last year and you can see the electronic Internet connection that allows an x-ray taken on Long Island to be read by a radiologist in India . So we do have to be prepared. We are in a competition for the future and I want your generation, my daughter's generation, which has some of the smartest hardest working, socially conscious young people we ever had in America to be prepared to take on these unprecedented challenges and to stand up for issues about the challenges of globalization or global warming or genocide in Darfur or terrorism because we are going to need your minds, your hearts and your souls to campaign and win on every one of those fronts for the future. And I don't think we're giving you enough support and tools to do the jobs you're going to have to face. We are making it very difficult for many students now to afford to go to college and stay in college and finish their degrees. Twenty five years ago it wasn't as expensive for a middle income family to be able to save the money and help their son or daughter go to college. Now it is, and these costs are staggering and I don't think your leaders are paying enough attention.

And one of the things we have to fight for, I joined with senator Schumer and others a few years to make college tuition tax deductible up to four thousand dollars a year. Now, there is a debate in Washington as to whether that will stay in or come out of the tax negotiations that's going on. Well, we need a new era of support for the American middle class and that means helping people with the cost of college education and today I'm announcing that I am going to be introducing in the Senate a Student-Borrowers Bill of Rights because I understand that 80% of C.W. Post students will graduate with loans to repay. I remember both my husband and I graduated with loans and it was a challenge, but we eventually got them paid off, but too often what happens today is that they change the rules on you after you get out of school. We need to make it easier for you to get student aid and loans and we need to make sure you have the rights to really know what it is you are signing up for. You need the right to a fair monthly payment that does not exceed a certain percentage of your income.

All the time, I meet young people who say to me, “You know, Senator, I'd really like to go to nursing school or I'd like to be a teacher or id like to go into law enforcement but I've got so much debt now that I don't know that I can afford to do that.” Well, we need to makes sure that you have fair interest rates and fees that are not exploiting the market you are a part of. You should be able to borrow without exploitation and be protected against improper lending practices which too often I see in the young people who come to my office. So we're going to try. We're going to try and give you some protection, give you the opportunity to get those loans paid off in a more reasonable way where you don't have to give up the career that you would love to do. The loans should not stand in your way to follow you dreams. And finally I hope that you will take some dares in your life.

You know, in 1999 when I was thinking off running for the Senate, I did not know what to do. Some days I thought it was a good idea, most days I thought it was a horrible idea. And some days I said, “I'm not going to do it I'm absolutely totally sure I'm not going to do it” and something would happen and I'd say, “OK, I'll listen to the people who are trying to persuade me to do it again.” Well in march of 1999, I was really thinking hard because I had to make a decision. And there were a lot of things to consider. Obviously, no first lady had ever sought public office before. I had obviously never run for office before. I was looking for some sign, something to make it clear that I should do it or I shouldn't do it, kind of like the push that I got from my mother all those years ago to stay in college and see it through.

Well, I was scheduled to go to a high school in New York City to join Billie Jean King, the tennis legend, at an event promoting a documentary about Title 9 and women in sports. Well, we gathered that day in the gymnasium and there were a lot of young women athletes. Volleyball players, soccer players and softball players and so many of the young women who had taken advantage of the fact that a law was passed which helped to change their lives. We were on a stage under a big banner which said, “Dare to Compete,” and a young woman, the captain of the basketball team, named Sophia was introducing me and she introduced me and I came up to the podium and I reached over to shake her had to thank her and she was much taller me. She bent over she whispered in my ear, “Dare to compete, Mrs. Clinton, dare to compete.” Well I had spent all my adult life encouraging young women to go to college to pursue a career that maybe was non-traditional to make a leap of faith and do what they really cared about doing. And here was this young woman telling me that I should dare to compete.

Often our most fearsome competitor is ourselves. We struggle with all of the internal doubts and anxieties, fears for the future concerns for the world. Sometimes when I look at what's happening in the world, it's hard to imagine going out and doing anything of meaning. But we can do it and not only that, we must. America needs you to grab hold of this moment. To dare to compete to do the best you can and to help make our country the best it can be and I promise I'll do what I can as a senator representing this extraordinary wonderful state, to help you in every way possible. So today, after you've accepted your diploma, but before you leave this place, please thank your family for guiding you to this moment. Thank your professors for showing you a new world. Thank your friends for exploring that world and finally remember what this day feels like. Cherish it always, go for it, God speed the world awaits you. Thank you all very much.

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