Chesapeake College Commencement Address
May 21, 2008
Introduction
Dr. Bounds, thank you very, very much for your kind introduction, and also thank you for inviting me to be with all of you on this joyous, happy occasion.
It is great to be with you on this beautiful day on the Eastern Shore. I was glad to accept Dr. Bounds’ invitation for a couple reasons. Number one, I think all of us owe him a debt of gratitude for 11 outstanding years. (Applause.)
Dr. Bounds, you’ve been our light and you've seen the potential that we have here in this beautiful part of our State and you've invested heart and soul into building up this college, so I really want to thank you. I love our community college presidents, they're an outstanding group of individuals and they make things happen. And as you know, community colleges are where America increasingly is going to college and people are investing, helping build skills, and also at the same time, holding down jobs and, in many instances, raising families and the like.
So, Dr. Bounds, thank you so much for your commitment.
My other reason, I have to confess to you, for wanting to accept this invitation is I love coming across that bridge. (Laughter.)
The stress kind of cascades off your back when you arrive on the Eastern Shore, this beautiful place. (Applause.)
My father and mother, but my father especially, used to enjoy the weekends when we would come down here, throw my brothers and me in the back of the station wagon. In fact, on the way here, I paused for a little bit. They’re doing a little bit of work where the Wye Oak once stood, and I have a sapling from that Wye Oak at the house where my parents raised us in Rockville -- it's the biggest tree on the block now.
I remember our times here fondly on the Eastern Shore, where Revolutionary men and women worked this land and raised their families with love and hope for the future, where the eagle and the osprey fly near to the face of God.
To the trustees who are here and the members of the faculty who are so rightly proud of this night, congratulations and thank you so much for your contribution.
And to the parents and to the grandparents, to the brothers and sisters, the sons and daughters who are here tonight, thank you for your love, your tears, your patience -- standing beside and behind these graduates. I know that they're grateful to you as well, and we would not be here without your support of these fine people who are about to walk down the aisle.
I am hopefully only a few years away myself with a daughter who is 17 and one right behind her who is 16. I’m only a few years behind many of you and looking forward to that joyous moment when they walk down the aisle of a place like this -- please, Lord, in State. (Laughter.)
See, I had some personal motivation for wanting to keep college education affordable in the State of Maryland. I'm very vested in that outcome.
I can remember when my wife finished up her last year of law school. We had a little baby at home and she was expecting our next and I am not sure how we did it, I'm not sure how she did it, but like so many of you, she hung in there and she got it done.
This is my favorite line of this evening. To the graduating class of 2008, congratulations, you did it! (Applause.)
And today we are here to celebrate you and to celebrate your accomplishments. We celebrate your collective accomplishments, we celebrate your collective pursuit of bigger and better things for yourselves and, more importantly, for the people around you. And of all the ways in which you will write the future history, really, of our State.
Those looking for inspiration who have used this to help write this history need only look to Chesapeake College Class of 2008. Because right here, ladies and gentlemen, in cap and gown are some really unique and beautiful and inspiring stories.
Stories of people like Casey Dale, who after earning a perfect 4.0 grade point average was selected for Who's Who Among American Junior College Students and nominated for the prestigious UMS Regent's Scholarship.
Stories of people like Anthony Mitchell, who in a few short moments will become the first member of his family to graduate from college.
Ann Marie’s Story
And stories of people like Ann Marie Hernandez. Now, Ann Marie and her husband José, who is a Corporal in the Cambridge City Police Department, have six kids. After dropping out of college long ago, Ann Marie never lost that yearning she felt in her heart to study nursing, to study at a career where she would be able to help and to heal others.
And after holding this dream close for years, Ann Marie received her acceptance to Chesapeake College, while expecting her fourth child. And then came one of life's unexpected turns, when Ann Marie received word of a family crisis and with another child on the way, and the prospect of two more little ones that would come into the family, putting them in a growing, loving, but difficult position.
But Ann Marie and José knew what they had to do. And they were motivated by that deepest of all spiritual forces, that desire that occupies the human soul, that powerful love that people have for their family.
So Ann Marie and José made the only choice their hearts allowed them to do, with a now larger family and faced the possibility of letting their dream slip away. But they did not give up. And a few days ago she received an award for excellence in the Psychosocial Aspects of Nursing.
And in a few moments Ann Marie Hernandez will receive her Associates Degree from Chesapeake College.
Her story is only beginning. Soon she'll start her nursing career in the emergency department at Dorchester General Hospital in Cambridge, the same city where her husband protects the public safety. All of this effort, plus all of this hard work to pursue a dream of serving and healing others.
We are a strong State, and I submit to you the reason why is because of the spirit, because of the drive … perhaps most importantly because of the essential kindness that is present in the hearts of so many of the people -- the vast majority of the people, frankly, that I have the high honor to be able to serve.
Good News As We Look Toward the Future
Today we honor your struggles, we honor your endurance, we honor your achievement. We celebrate passage, we celebrate transition, we celebrate high internal truths and we rejoice in fellowships and friendship and in prayer.
We pray in thanksgiving for the gifts that we’ve been given, we pray in anticipation of the joy of opportunities that lie ahead. And most of all, we pray that the Governor will be somewhat brief so that we can go home and go out. (Laughter.) I promise you, I will be brief.
I have some good economic news. How about that for a change? Let me give you some good economic news. (Applause.)
For all of you who are going out into the workforce with upgraded skillsets, it may give you some heart to know that for all the difficulties that our national economy is going through, they are heavy and they are great, (and all you have to do is try to fill up your gas tank to experience those difficulties) … Maryland’s job growth the last 12 months has actually outpaced the nation’s job growth fourfold. So we’ve had four times the amount of job growth in our State. In the most recent period when the country lost 80,000 jobs, we added 3,600 jobs.
Exports from the Port of Baltimore, our major port, are up 32 percent. And the unemployment rate in Maryland is about 30 percent lower than what the nation’s unemployment rate is.
So for all the downward news nationally, we are a strong State because we value the most important resource of all and that is the skills of our people -- the human intellect, the knowledge, the discovery, the learning, the art, the creativity of our people. And that’s why we’re going to come through this downturn more quickly and maybe even stronger than any of the other States.
We Need You
And we also need you. You know, a commencement speaker would be nothing if he or she did not point out that this is not the end, but the beginning.
But today, we do proclaim powerful truths that for all the diversity that we are blessed to share, there really are strong beliefs that unite us. And they are the belief in the dignity of every individual. A belief in our own responsibility to advance the common good. And an understanding that at the beginning and the end of our days there is a unity to spirit and to matter. In other words, that what we do in our own lifetime does matter.
The dawn of your future really breaks in a new way today. And as you look across that horizon, there are lots of people in this world that need you. Your mothers and fathers need you, our business managers, our economists, our poets need you. Our tired, our sick, our less fortunate need you. Our computer scientists, our visionaries need you. Your grandparents need you. And most importantly of all, an under-represented group when it comes to the exercise of the franchise, future generations really need you.
Future Preference
You see, we’re all counting on you to provide for our share of posterity. To not only do the work that honors your parents and your grandparents, whether they’re still with you now or not, but to also do something in life that will make your children’s children’s lives better.
There was a renowned historian by the name of Professor Quigley, who taught Georgetown University. And he began each semester with an important and timeless lesson I want to share with you.
He said, “The thing that got you here today is belief in the future; belief that the future can be better than the present and that people will and should sacrifice in the present to go to that better future.”
This idea, this powerful belief in tomorrow -- that it can be better than today if work to make it so -- is something that’s always been at the center of our State. Future preference. That we seek to build this better world for those who will come after us.
And because we seek to do that, we need you.
I know that I was not asked to speak today because I was an outstanding student myself at the University of Maryland School of Law, the most affordable law school in the land. I was not asked to speak today because of the smash hit CDs my band put out before they retired.
I know that I was asked to speak to you today by Dr. Bounds because I am the Governor of your State.
And so indulge me briefly while I talk about something that I have a little bit of experience with, and that is the choices, the politics that I think all of us -- regardless of party -- aspire to as a people. The values we share allow us to really come together to summons our higher choice, especially on nights like this. And instead of turning to the politics of personal attack, of partisanship, to instead the politics of posterity. The politics of posterity -- the politics that direct us to make choices that are going to make this world a better place. The politics which gives us the courage to change our circumstances, rather than allowing our circumstances to change us.
This tradition, which is ingrained so deeply in the human spirit, was at the very founding of our nation as well. In the earliest documents where those founding fathers who signed what, in essence, was a death warrant did so not only to protect the blessings of liberty for themselves, but for their posterity.
It was present when our country was able to hold together at the beginning, it was present in that World War II generation, who not only defeated oppression and fascism abroad, but then had the foresight to rebuild Europe so their children and grandchildren would grow up in a stronger country and in a safer world.
We are a revolutionary people and always have been. To those who refused to move to the back of the bus, to those who faced down fire hoses and clubs and bullets so that people would be judged by the content of their character … the politics of posterity.
Our Shared Priorities
And now it’s your turn to build that stronger future that all of us prefer. Future preference has motivated everything that we have tried to do in this Administration as your servants at the State level.
Because of the stronger future that all of us prefer, we’re making record investments in higher education, including our community colleges. In two years, we’ve increased funding for Chesapeake College by 38 percent. That’s $3 million more than what was invested in this great institution during the same period of our predecessors.
We’re increasing investments in community colleges in similar numbers throughout the State. Because of the stronger future preference that all of us prefer, we fought to hold the line on any increases at our four year colleges.
Because of the stronger future that we prefer, we’ve increased our investments in adult literacy by 400 percent in just two years. In the five counties served by this college -- Caroline, Dorchester, Queen Anne’s and Talbot -- this semester we increased from $115,000 to more than half a million dollars to attack the challenge of adult literacy.
Because of the stronger future that we prefer, we’re sustaining record investments as a people in K-12 education. Newsweek had an article this week that ranked our public school system as one of the top three in the entire United States of America. And it is no wonder then that we would have one of the top three most highly skilled workforces in America because of our future preference.
And that’s why we’re making strides to clean up the Bay. That’s why we’re tripling our investment in cover crops. That’s why we’re investing in public safety. That’s why we’re investing to extend health care coverage to 100,000 more Marylanders. Because of the strong future preference that we possess for that One Maryland that we carry in our hearts.
Conclusion
Now today your individual success in a very real way represents the culmination and commencement of that better future. We’re counting on your energy, we’re counting on your passion to move our State forward to make continued progress. It needs what you’ve learned for the good of others. And you know what? Your State, your country, your neighbors in this world really, really need you.
A generation ago Robert Kennedy said that “each of us can work to change a small portion of events. And in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.”
Well, that parchment and that pen are now yours. So write that history. Write the history of a stronger America, write the history of an ever more healing America, write the history of a more compassionate America, write the history of a greener, cleaner America, write the history of an ever more diverse, ever more welcoming, ever more open America, an ever more globally engaged America.
And as you write that history you will in your own individual ways change this world. And you’ll change it for the better.
God bless you all and thank you. (Applause.)
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