REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
TO UCLA 75TH ANNIVERSARY CONVOCATION

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary
(Los Angeles, California)
______________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release May 20, 1994


REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
TO UCLA 75TH ANNIVERSARY CONVOCATION

Pauley Pavilion
UCLA
Los Angeles, California



2:24 P.M. PDT


THE PRESIDENT: Thank you so much for allowing me to
be part of this wonderful occasion and for the University medal.
You know, for a person like me who is a die-hard basketball fan,
just walking in Pauley Pavilion was a great honor. (Applause.)
I dreamed of being here for many years, but I never thought that
it would be on this kind of occasion. (Laughter.)

I'm proud to be here to honor the University's 75th
anniversary, and to honor your Chancellor on his 25th anniversary
of service. It is the sort of commitment our country could do
with more of, and I honor it and I know you do, too. (Applause.)

To my good friend, Mayor Riordan; President
Peltason; Regent Sue Johnson; President Shapiro; to Carol
Goldberg-Ambrose, the chair of your Academic Senate; to Kate
Anderson and Khosrow Khosravani -- we had a great talk over
there. I hope we didn't earn any conduct demerits. But the two
students told me a lot about UCLA. (Laughter.)

To all of you, I thank you for the chance to be
here. The spirit in this room has been truly moving to me today.

This is a sad day for our country and for my family
because we mourn the loss of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
(Applause.) She was a remarkable woman of courage and dignity,
who loved things that ennobled the human spirit. She and
President Kennedy inspired me and an entire generation of
Americans to see the nobility of helping others and the good that
could come in public service.

In later years, and particularly in this last year,
it was my family's privilege to get to know her personally and to
see that the image which was projected to all the world was more
than met by the true person behind the image.

Today, as we offer our prayers and best wishes to
her family, I think it well to remember that Jackie Kennedy and
her husband called us to a time when the world was full of
challenges that we saw in terms of possibilities, not problems.
We saw our own lives in terms of promise, not pessimism. We
thought our job here on Earth was to build up, not tear down; to
unite, not to divide.

I say to the students who are here from this
magnificent institution, you now have an education as fine as the
world can afford. The question now is as you go out into the
world, what is your attitude about yourselves, each other, your
country and your future.

UCLA, as I watched that slide show it was clear to
me again, is an example of America's faith in the future, the
thing that's kept us going for 218 years now. Seventy-five years
ago, this was just a tiny two-year teachers college on a dirt
road in Hollywood. Now, it's one of the leading research
institutions in the world, and a bridge to the future for tens of
thousands of Americans and people who come from all around the
world to be here. (Applause.)

There's no better place to discuss the future than
here in California, America's last frontier. For all your
present difficulties, don't ever forget that California is still
America's America -- the cutting edge for a nation, still a
symbol of hope and optimism throughout the world. (Applause.)

I want to say that I very much envy those of you who
are beginning your future here and now on the edge of this new
century. Many say that this generation of college graduates is
filled with pessimism, with a sense of generational despair that
our glory days are behind us. Americans of my generation have
been bombarded by images on television shows, and even one book,
about the so-called "Generation X" filled with cynics and
slackers. Well, what I have seen today is not a generation of
slackers, but a generation of seekers. And I am much encouraged.
(Applause.)

To be sure, you are beginning your journey in
uncertain times. Many of the college graduates of 1994 were born
in 1973. That was a watershed year in American life. You see,
from the end of World War II until 1973, family income doubled in
America. And we lived in an era of prosperity that we almost
came to take for granted. The middle class grew ever larger and
more secure; our country was stronger. People just took it for
granted that they could jobs they could hold for a lifetime, that
they would always do better every year than they did the year
before, that they would be able to afford to send their children
to college, to have a comfortable retirement, to own their own
homes and to take care of their parents.

Since then most Americans have worked harder and
harder for the same or lower incomes. Our society has suffered
unbelievable stresses as broken homes and unwed mothers have
become commonplace. In many places devastated by poverty and
despair, we have seen the absolute collapse of families and work
itself and the sense of community. And in that vacuum have
rushed gangs and drugs and violence -- the kind of random
violence that today often makes neighbors seem like strangers,
and strangers thought of as enemies.

In the time that many of you went from the first
grade through high school graduation, when all this was going on,
your national government was embroiled in a sense of gridlock and
paralysis and high rhetoric and low action. The deficit
quadrupled, but there were no investments made adequate to the
challenges of the future and many of our tough problems were
talked about but not acted on.

Here in this county, you've experienced earthquakes
of all kinds, not just the real earthquake of January, but social
and economic upheavals. The trends that are shaking and remaking
our entire society have hit California first and hardest.

Next month many college graduates will move on to
their first full time jobs. And I wonder how many of you have,
like me, laughed and almost cried reading that wonderful
Doonesbury comic strip -- that is, on some days I think it's
wonderful; some days I'm not so sure -- (laughter) -- which means
I probably feel the same way about Mr. Trudeau that he feels
about me -- (laughter.) But he's -- you know, the great
Doonesbury strip about the students at the college graduation
trading stories about their job openings and whether they're
going to be selling blue jeans or flipping hamburgers.
(Laughter.) Well, it's funny, but it's not quite accurate.

The truth is that education still makes a huge
difference in what you can do with your lives and your future.
It is still the key -- indeed, more the key today than ever
before. The truth also is that your destiny will be filled with
great chances and great choices. As with every new generation in
this country, you will make your mark by exploring new frontiers.

Once the challenge was settling a new continent.
Now it is preparing for a new century. And you face the next
American frontier which you can see here at UCLA all around you,
living with people who may seem different, working with
technologies that may seem difficult, pursuing markets and
opportunities that may seem distant. For the rest of your lives
you will face this choice.

In the face of bewildering, intense, sometimes
overpowering change, you can recoil. You can hope to do as well
as you can for as long as you can simply by trying to hold the
future at arm's length, or you can act in the spirit of America -
- to the state, or this great university of which you are a part.
The spirit of the families who sacrificed so much to bring you
here. You can embrace the future with all of its changes and
engage in what the late Oliver Wendell Holmes called "the action
and passion of your time." The choice you make as individuals
and as a generation will make all the difference.

Three times in this century alone our nation has
found itself a victor in global conflicts: World War I, World
War II, and the Cold War. Three times America has faced the
fundamental question of which direction we would take, embracing
or rejecting the future. Seventy-five years ago, when this
university was founded, we faced one of those pivotal moments.
At that time, just after the end of World War I, there was also
wrenching change and enormous anxiety.

The nation's hottest new novelist was a man named F.
Scott Fitzgerald. He described the so-called "lost generation"
-- the first that would graduate from UCLA. He said that they
grew up -- and I quote -- "to find all gods dead, all wars
fought, all faiths in man shaken." America withdrew from the
world, seeking security and isolationism and protectionism.

An ugly withdrawal occurred here at home as well --a
retreat into the trenches of racial prejudice and religious
prejudice; of class bigotry and easy convenience; and a simple
refusal to prepare our people to live in the world as it was.

Ten years later, just ten years later, in 1929, that
decade of neglect produced the Great Depression. And soon we
learned we could not withdraw from a world menaced by dictators,
and we found ourselves again in a world war.

At the end of the second world war, we made a very
different choice as a people. We decided to reach out to the
future together -- together here at home, and together with
nations around the world. As Franklin Roosevelt said of the
generation of my parents and the graduates' grandparents, they
believed history was -- I quote -- "a highway on which your
fellow men and women are advancing with you."

Abroad we lifted former allies and former enemies
from the ashes. At home, investment in the future began with the
returning warriors. The G.I. Bill helped millions of Americans
to get an education, to buy homes, to build the great American
middle class. We made a solemn covenant, we would help those who
would help themselves.

The wise decisions of that time built four decades
of robust economic growth and expanding opportunity, and laid the
foundation for us to be able to win the Cold War. Now, we stand
at our third pivotal moment in this history. And you are
designed to play the leading role.

The Cold War is over. It is up to all of us to keep
the American Dream alive here at home, even as it advances
abroad. But this miracle of renewal must begin with personal
decisions.

I sought the presidency in large measure because I
thought my generation had not yet done its job for America. I
did not want my daughter to grow up to be part of the first
generation of Americans to do worse than their parents.

As we were becoming more wonderful diverse, I did
not want her to live in a country that was coming apart when it
ought to be coming together. I wanted to forge the two great
sources of strength that our nation has -- the power of our
representative government as manifested in the presidency to
address the challenges of every age and time; and the far, far
greater power of the American people themselves to transform
themselves, their families and their communities, to seize the
future and make it theirs.

My generation's responsibility to you is heavy,
indeed. We are working in Washington to meet it -- working to
turn around the economic difficulties. And we have made a good
beginning -- 3 million new jobs in 15 months; three years of
deficit reduction -- (applause) -- three years of deficit
reduction for the first time since Harry Truman was President.
(Applause.) At the end of this budget cycle, the smallest
federal government in 30 years, since John Kennedy was President,
with all the savings going back to you to make America safer,
with more police officers on the street and programs to help our
children stay out of crime and have a better future. (Applause.)

We are investing in the technologies of tomorrow,
from defense conversion to environmental protection to the
information superhighway; with new attacks on our profoundest
problems, from AIDS to women's health problems, to homelessness,
to the deed to have enterprise development among the poor in
cities and rural areas, to the terrible difficulties of our
health care system.

We are building education for a lifetime from
dramatic expansions in Head Start to permanent retraining
programs for displaced adults. We are looking for new markets
for our products and services with new trade agreements and new
opportunities to sell our best efforts here around the world.

My fellow Americans, this country is on the move,
and California is coming back. But the real problem I believe we
have today is the problem I came to talk to you about -- what
will the attitude of your generation be, and how will you
approach the future that is before you.

Jackie Kennedy and her husband made us believe that
citizenship was a wonderful thing; that we all had the capacity

to be better people and to work together, and that the things we
could do together would make a very great difference indeed. If
President Kennedy were alive today, he would be absolutely
shocked at the pessimism, the negativism, the division, the
destructive tone of public discourse in America today.

We know we can do better. But if we are to do
better, you will have to lead us by looking around at all this
diversity you have celebrated today, by this devotion to
community you have exhausted and bringing it out of us.

Just before I came here I stopped briefly at Norton
Air Force Base in San Bernardino, which, as you know, was one of
the bases closed, to announce the progress we are making at
rebuilding that community with a new computer center there, with
turning over the land to a new airport and for other public
purposes and eventually for economic development. And it's the
first one of these bases in the country that the government has
finally said, let's help people build their economy instead of
dragging this out til kingdom come.

And it was a celebration that knew no party lines,
knew no philosophical lines, knew no racial lines. Nobody was
out there talking about left and right, and liberal and
conservative, and Republican and Democrat. They were talking
about how we could deal with the real problems and opportunities
of those people, to pull that community together and push it
forward into the future. That is what we must do as a people.
And that is what your generation must do in order for America to
fulfill its promise. (Applause.)

Now, to do that in a great democracy, where there
are a myriad of complex problems and legitimate differences of
opinion, we must learn to do something as a people that we often
take for granted in the university. We have to learn to talk to
each other and to listen to each other, not to talk past each
other and to scream at one another.

We have been caught up in what Georgetown Professor
Deborah Tannen calls a culture of critique. One sure way to get
instant public standing in our popular culture is to slam
somebody else. If you work on bringing people together and you
talk about it, you're likely to elicit a yawn. But if you bad-
mouth people, you can get yourself a talk show. (Applause.)

This country was not built by bad-mouthing. Go back
and look at the history of the Constitutional Convention. Go
back and look at how people got together wildly different points
of view and argued heatedly, but always with a common love of
this country and the values of freedom and mutual respect. We
have to find a way in this age and time to restore that kind of
discourse and that kind of respect. We cannot afford to engage
in the citizenship of division and distraction and destruction.
We have a future to build, and you must lead the way. You know
you can do it, because of the way you have been educated here and
the people from whom you have learned and with whom you've
learned. And you can lead the way for the whole future of this
country. (Applause.)

It was because I believe that so strongly that I put
at the center of what symbolizes our administration the National
Service Corps, what we call Americorps: the opportunity for tens
of thousands of young people to work where they live or where
they go to school, solving the problems of America at the grass
roots, learning from each other, reaching across lines that
divide them, and earning money for their educations at the same
time. Rebuild America, and educate a new generation.

It's sort of a domestic G.I. Bill and a domestic
Peace Corps all rolled into one. It was inspired by efforts that
I saw all over America over the last few years -- efforts like
the California Campus Compact, which your Chancellor helped to
found, which now commits more than 50 colleges and universities
in this state to helping students serve their communities. At
UCLA alone some 4,000 of you are working in more than 40 service
programs, and I honor you for that. (Applause.)

This summer 7,000 young Americans will work in a
Summer of Safety, helping their communities to be less violent.
Last summer in our first summer of service, thousands of people
all over the country including here in Los Angeles taught young
people everything from how to stay away from drugs to how to stay
safe in an earthquake.

Service creates heroes. I was interested in the
three people acknowledged there by Chancellor Young, and I
appreciate what he said. Let me say that there's one project I'd
like to mention in particular which one of the young students is
involved in, Saru Jayaraman, along with another student, Desiree
DeSurra -- they helped to found the Women In Support of Each
Other, acronym WISE. (Applause.)

This program, WISE, helped high school girls to make
wise decisions to pursue their education and not to become single
mothers. Desiree was one of three students selected to win this
year's Chancellor's Humanitarian Award. (Applause.)

Now, let me tell you what that means to me. That is
America at its best. People helping people. Telling people,
look, maybe the President should do something; maybe the
Chancellor of the University should do something: maybe the Mayor
should do something. But in the end, you also have to take
responsibility for your own lives. You have to make good
decisions in order to be part of a good future. (Applause.)

Thousands of young people just here on this campus
alone have made a decision to make a difference. Beginning this
September, Americorps will enable tens of thousands more to do
that. I hope I live long enough to see hundreds of thousands of
people in this program every year, earning their way to a better
education by rebuilding America every day at the grass-roots
level. (Applause.)

The point of all that I have said is this: The
future is not an inheritance, it is an opportunity and an
obligation. It is something you have to make, in every
generation, and it will be your achievement -- not only for
yourselves individually, but for your generation, for your
community and for the larger community that is America.

If you look around you at this incredible campus
where minorities make up a majority, something that will be true
for whole states in the not-too-distant future, you see the
future. L.A. County with over 150 different racial and ethnic
groups, thousands of people in this county celebrating this month
as Asian Pacific American Heritage Month because of the number of
people who live here. (Applause.)

A few days ago in America we celebrated the Cinco de
Mayo celebration, Mexican Independence Day . (Applause.) And it
is now as big a celebration in America as it is in Mexico because
of our diversity. Will it be a source of our strength in the
global village, or will we permit it to divide us. I believe I
know the answer. And I think you do, too.

There's no reason to be cynical about the future no
matter how difficult our problems are. Look what's just happened
in the last four or five years since many of you came to the
university here -- the end of the Cold War, the fall of the
Berlin Wall. Just in the last year, Russia and the United States
agreed not to point nuclear weapons at each other anymore.
(Applause.) Rabin and Arafat agreed to self-government for the
Palestinians in Jericho and the Gaza. (Applause.) The jailer
and the jailed, de Klerk and Mandela, agreed that South Africa
free, united is more important than anything else. (Applause.)

In just a few days from now I will go to represent
you at the 50th anniversary of the D-Day invasion. Just a few
days ago, I was able to speak on the 40th anniversary of the
Supreme Court's landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education.
(Applause.) It is very important for a great country to remember
those moments.