Wesleyan University
172nd Commencement
Douglas J. Bennet, President
Sunday, May 23, 2004

Welcome Class of 2004. Welcome parents, family members, friends, and well wishers, Board Chair Alan Dachs, Wesleyan trustees, Wesleyan faculty and staff. Welcome alumni and their families. Welcome to Wesleyan's 172nd Commencement.

This is a proud moment for each of you, each member of the Class of 2004, but it its also a proud moment for family and friends so please join me in thanking them again, as Alan Dachs has done, for their support.

It’s a proud moment for Wesleyan and it’s a sad moment for Midge and me because we will miss the class of 2004.

You were the first class to begin Wesleyan in this millennium, this century. And you are likely the class that suffered through the most mud. I thank you for putting up with so many building projects. You’ve been able to benefit from some of them. I hope you’ll come back to see us when all the new buildings are done.

I could read a shopping list of statistics about your class:

How many meals you have eaten here.
How many classes you went to.
How many you skipped.
How many presidential roundtables attended (never enough).
How many fellowships won, awards granted, papers published.

But that list of numbers could never capture all the gifts you have given to Wesleyan.

The first gift is your hard intellectual work, the academic exchanges among student colleagues, and with your faculty mentors. As all of you know, liberal education at Wesleyan is a shared process engaging a community of learners. You have embraced this tradition with excellence, with focus, with curiosity, and with grace.

Second, your class has set a new and high standard in student governance—governance that works for students and along with the administration and faculty to improve Wesleyan.

There is a third, very tangible and enduring gift that our visitors learned about from [Alumni Association Chair] David Bartholomew. The class of 2004 has contributed generously to provide financial aid so that other students can attend. Ninety-three percent of the class has contributed, an all-time Wesleyan record, and a powerful affirmation as we move toward a successful conclusion of the Wesleyan Campaign. So, I thank you again for your leadership and your commitment to one of Wesleyan’s fundamental values, which is access.

I want to reflect briefly today on access because it is so essential to today's celebration. Access is something almost all of us have, more than most people in the world. Access is about being able to be heard and taken seriously. It is about the opportunity to advance as far as your energy and imagination will carry you. Wesleyan graduates, even in the early stages of post-commencement job hunting, will find that they can open doors and can be heard. And my point today is that we all need to commit ourselves to using the access we have to pave the way for others.

It is impossible to celebrate the access we all enjoy, and Wesleyan's commitment to it, without recalling the fiftieth anniversary of Brown versus the Board of Education that occurred last Monday. Linda Brown, a fifth grader in the Topeka, Kansas public schools, was denied admission to her local elementary school because she was black. The NAACP took up her case, along with similar suits in Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware. The combined suits reached the Supreme Court as Brown versus the Board of Education.

The case took two years to argue and reargue and on May 17, fifty years ago, a decision was handed down. The court said unanimously that separate but equal was never equal. Separate creates unequal. Separate is unequal. Separate denies access. The courts said clearly that all U.S. citizens should enjoy equal access to all public schools.

An alumnus of the class of 1954, here for his fiftieth reunion, informed me that Chief Justice Earl Warren was Wesleyan's commencement speaker that year, a month after the Court's decision. The timing must have been coincidental. We do not have Justice Warren's speech. We can imagine that he was warmly received, but Wesleyan was not immediately transformed by his visit.

When I arrived at Wesleyan a year later, there were two or three black students in my class. The campus began to respond to the logic of Brown. Two Wesleyan fraternities, admonished for accepting Blacks and Jews, withdrew from their national sponsors rather than remain segregated.

In 1965 Wesleyan admitted 27 minorities of whom 14 joined the Class of 1969. This group of became celebrated as “The Vanguard Class.” Thirty-three African American students matriculated in 1966. Thirty-nine in 1967. The door to diversity was finally beginning to open. In 1968 Wesleyan admitted its first women since 1910.

None of these changes was easy for Wesleyan and certainly not for many of the incoming students. They were the pioneers of Wesleyan's abiding commitment to diversity and to access, an enterprise that is still very much a work in progress today. Some of those pioneers are with us today celebrating their reunions.

The question of access to education in our country is by no means settled. Fifty years have passed and racial isolation continues in many communities. And now, the economic divide is growing. Studies confirm what we would guess. Chances that a student will finish high school, be prepared for college, and go to college, increase with family income. Economic barriers discourage many qualified high school students from seeking higher education. So. many of our nation’s brightest youngsters believe our best colleges are economically out of reach.

Each of you has had access to one of the best universities in the world. And now, each of you has greater access because of your education. You now have the opportunity to use your access to create access for others.

I know I am preaching to the choir. The class of 2004 is a worthy heir to Wesleyan's legacy. I know you brought good values from home. You’ve shown it through your volunteerism and leadership, by your sense of personal and global responsibility.

Being here today is an incredible privilege for all. Let's leave here today with a determination to use our own leverage in society to make sure there is real access to education for all.

I thank you for all of your gifts to Wesleyan. The University is better off for your work, your play, your good will, your prodding, your persistence, your enthusiasm, your seriousness, and your attention to issues.

I congratulate you, the Class of 2004.

Thank you.