By Mary Jo Frank
Rejoicing with the Class of 1996 on what she described as a "great gettin'-up morning," speaker Johnnetta B. Cole highlighted the important
connections between study and action, intellectual
work and community service at the U-M's May 4
Spring Commencement at Michigan Stadium.
"I genuinely hope that you will be more
concerned with the quality of your life than with
the accumulation of things," said Cole, the first
African American woman to serve as president of
Spelman College in Atlanta. In 1992, Spelman became
the first historically Black college to receive a
number one rating in US News and World
Report's annual college issue of "Best College Buys."
"What will it cost you to reach out and
touch the hand of someone you care about?" asked Cole, an anthropologist, as she invited the more than 40,000 audience members to do just that.
Cole encouraged the graduates to spend Saturday afternoons at a community center tutoring girls and boys or introducing senior citizens to the World Wide Web.
"I hope you will come to know the joy of helping out in a
homeless shelter or bringing comfort to women in a rape crisis center. This is
my plea for your involvement in community service, in the great
American way of volunteerism."
Cole also exhorted the graduates to become involved in the
political process. "One of the greatest actions that you can take, the most
revolutionary thing you can do, is to participate in the sacred right of
every American to vote. That is how our nation can change for the better.
Ask my fellow honoree, Jesse Hill, what it meant for increasing numbers
of African Americans to vote."
Hill, chairman of the board of Atlanta Life Insurance Company and
a leader in the civil rights movement since the 1950s, was a driving
force behind a campaign in Atlanta that saw more than 50,000 African
Americans register to vote. In 1977, he was elected chairman of the
Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, the first African American to hold such a position in a major US city.
Others who received honorary doctoral degrees
with Cole and Hill were:
Henryk Górecki ("GoRETSkee"), the Polish composer who is regarded as one of the most talented of the 20th century; his music has in the past several years traveled more widely and attracted new performers
and audiences in the West.
Mstislav Rostropovich, widely regarded as the world's greatest living cellist and a defender of human rights, is currently music director of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, DC, and the nation's music director laureate.
Nafis Sadik, a Pakistani-born physician who is
executive director of the UN Population Fund. On her appointment in 1987, she became the first woman to head one of the United Nations' major voluntarily funded programs.
Stephen Smale, a leading mathematician who
has made important contributions in differential topology, dynamical systems, many aspects of nonlinear analysis and geometry, and in applied mathematics.
The graduates and honorees were congratulated by LS&A Dean Edie
N. Goldenberg, who noted that the ceremony was also a graduation and
commencement for President James J. Duderstadt, who announced in
September that he was returning to the faculty effective July 1.
Goldenberg thanked the University's 11th president "for his many
years of dedicated service to the University," and offered him the College's
"best wishes as he launches the next phase of his career."
Cole, known in Atlanta as "Sister Prez," also praised "Brother
Duderstadt," saying, "I applaud his sterling commitment to racial and gender equity
in the American educational community."
Student speaker Marian Fiona Bouch of Bloomfield Hills, Michigan,
said that "as we walk the paths which radiate in every direction from this,
our field, we inevitably will meet those men and women who have shared in
the privilege of a University of Michigan undergraduate experience."
In the future, she added, "we should do what this University
always asked us to learn to do during our stay here: that as we open our arms
to those faces made familiar by a common Michigan tradition, we should
also extend a hand to the face unfamiliar; we should
listen to the voices which speak to us from orbits different from our own."
With such an attitude, she predicted, "We
will be able to return to Ann Arbor, comforted by
not only the memories of good times, but also by the security of our integrity, for we
will have presented ourselves as capable and considerate examples of the
20-something generation, and it will be the making of us as graduates of the
University of Michigan."
. . . June 1996