Howard Community College Remarks
May 16, 2008
Thank you all very, very much. Elias, thank you for that introduction. I had forgotten myself I had done some of those things.
Congratulations to all of you. And, thank you, President Heatherington and congratulations to you on your first year here. It’s not every first year president that wins a national award at Howard Community College.
That 2007 U.S. Senate Productivity Award is something that all of you should be very, very rightly proud of. It is a scary thing for any public institution to actually measure performance and outputs and productivity. But that’s what your president has chosen to do because she’s a courageous person who builds on the things that have come before and is willing to take it to the next level.
To the trustees who are here and to the members of the faculty who are so rightly proud this night, to County Executive Ken Ulman, and all of the members of the Howard County Council, who are rightly proud of the fact that Howard County, I do believe, last year had the highest elementary test scores of any county in the State. And if you doubt that, Liz Bobo will confirm it with a nod -- yes, we do.
And to the members of the General Assembly, other platform guests -- especially to the parents and grandparents, the sons and daughters, who are with us today, thank you for the love and the tears and your patience in standing beside these graduates. Give yourselves a round of applause.
We would not be here, awash in this excitement, were it not for your support of the fine people that are walking down this aisle.
I am hopefully only a few years from seeing my oldest walk down the aisle some place, hopefully, please, Lord, in State. So I have some personal motive for wanting to freeze tuition to four year colleges and provide adequate funding. I don’t deny it, I don’t deny it. It’s a confluence of interests. It’s an interest in the future. I’m looking forward to it.
I can remember when my wife finished up her last year of law school. We had a little baby at home, we had another on the way, and somehow we -- especially she -- made it through and today, so have you. And I know there’s individual stories like that throughout this big tent under which we gather.
To the class of 2008, I just want to say congratulations … you did it!
You are part of the largest graduating class in the history of this institution. And today in caps and gowns, there is a sea of 701 unique and beautiful stories.
Stories of people like Naeema Sandy, who in a few moments will receive certifications in chemical dependency and mental health. Members of her family were taken from this world because of alcohol and drugs and now she is taking that pain and she’s turning it into promise. She’s turning it into service to others.
Stories of people like April Waskey, who started taking classes at this college in 1978 and then as other things in life came bumping along, she now, 30 years later, after much hard work, perseverance, and a never-give-up attitude is moments away from receiving her degree. (Applause.)
Stories of people like Alex Estevez, who worked for years in the mail room at 20th Century Fox -- remember this name -- dreaming of someday answering a yearning in his soul to study art. And today he becomes the first person in his family to graduate college and he plans to further his studies so he can become an art teacher.
Now, Naeema, April, Alex and all 698 of your closest friends as we celebrate you today, as we honor your struggles, your endurance and your achievement, we also celebrate passage. We celebrate transition. And we celebrate a very high and eternal commitment, we rejoice in fellowship and friendship and we pray. We pray in thanksgiving for the gifts that we have as citizens of this great State, of this great country. We pray in anticipation of the joy and the opportunities that we know and we hope lie ahead for us.
And mostly we pray that the Governor will be as brief as Ken Ulman, so we can go home to our parties and our friends and our dinner, right? (Applause.)
Well, I will be brief, but I have to, as the keynote speaker, share with you just a few thoughts.
I have, first of all, some good economic news for all of you that are about to go out into the workforce or continue to join it with higher skills. And here’s the good economic news -- over the most recent period our nation lost 80,000 jobs. In Maryland, we added 3,600 in that same time period. (Applause.)
Some more good news. While the unemployment rate in our country, the leading indicator that we watch, in Maryland, we are about 30 percent below the national unemployment rate. So we do have jobs we are creating because of institutions and our intellectual capital. (Applause.)
Places like Morgan Stanley and T. Rowe Price moving 2,000 jobs to Maryland. The BRAC realignment and closure process -- you know, the bases, our military installations are growing, that’s 60,000 more jobs coming to Maryland, and exports in our State actually rose by 32 percent in the first quarter.
So for all the dour news nationally, our State, our strong State, where we do value the most important asset and resource of all, and that is human intellect, knowledge, discovery, learning, art, creativity, is a State that’s ahead of other States. And we will come out of this national downturn more quickly than others, if we can cling to the things that matter and protect our priorities.
You know, the motto of this college is that, “You can get there from here.” Your lifelong pursuit of “there” ends in a sense, but also begins in a sense today. This commitment -- this word that signifies not an end, but a beginning, the pursuit of eternal and important things.
This day when we proclaim the powerful truth that for all of the diversity that we are blessed to share as a community in this county, in this State, in this country - there are important strong beliefs that unite us. A belief in the dignity of every individual. A belief in our own responsibility to advance the common good. And an understanding at the beginning and the end of our days that there is unity of spirit and to matter and that what we do in our own lifetimes does matter. In other words, that one person does make a difference and that each of us must try.
And as we look out over the horizon, dreaming of the things to come, know this -- and know it deeply – there’s a lot of people who 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, computer scientists, our visionaries need you. Your grandparents need you, your children need you, future generations need you, and your children’s children need you.
You see, we’re all counting on you; we’re counting on you to provide for our posterity. To not only do the work that honors our parents and grandparents, whether they’re still with us or not, but work that makes the lives of our children’s children better.
There was a professor named Professor Quigley, a renowned professor at Georgetown University, and he began each new semester with this important and timeless lesson that I wanted to share with you tonight. 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 get to that better future.”
That idea, that powerful belief in tomorrow, that belief that it can be better than today if we work to make it so, is something we’ve always held as Marylanders, it’s the thing that Professor Quigley called future preference. And as we seek to build this better world for those who will come after us, we need you.
I was not asked to speak today because of my accomplishments in law, I know. I was not asked to speak today because of the four smash hit CDs that we put out as a band. (Laughter.)
I think I was invited because I happen to be the public servant of all of you who call this State Maryland. And I ask that you indulge me in talking a little bit about how those values can guide the sort of politics that we aspire to as a people.
The values we share allow us, really, to summon our higher angels, especially on nights like this, to set aside the coarse temptation to be side-tracked by the things that pollute our public discourse, to put aside the politics of personal attack or partisanship. And instead, to summon forward from the earliest days of this country’s founding, the politics of posterity. The politics of posterity that would make choices that leave this world a better place. The politics of posterity that responds to that yearning that all of us have in our hearts to leave a better future for our kids. To change our circumstances, rather than to allow our circumstances to change us.
And that’s what we are attempting to do as your servants on the state level. Because of a stronger future that all of us prefer, we are making record investments in community colleges. We have doubled State funding for Howard Community College in the first two years of this administration, compared to the first two years of our predecessors. That’s from $9 million to $24 million.
Because of the stronger future that all of us prefer, we are increasing investments in community colleges by 39 percent statewide over that same time period.
Because of the better future that we prefer, we have fought to hold the line on any increases in college tuitions at our four-year colleges.
Because of the better future that we prefer, we are sustaining record investments in K through 12 education.
It is no accident that Forbes magazine would say that our state has the third best and most highly skilled workforce in the country. It’s because we also have the third best public school system in the country and we want to be the best.
Because of the better future that we prefer, we have increased by 300 percent our funding of adult literacy programs in our State.
Because of the better future that we prefer, we are making serious strides in cleaning up the Bay.
We are extending health care to 100,000 Marylanders that last year were without health care because of the future that we prefer.
And today, your success, your individual success, in a very real way represents the culmination and the 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, to use what you have earned for the good of others -- your state, your country and your world - I don’t need to tell you - 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.
The parchment and the pen are now yours. 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 and cleaner America. Write the history of an ever more diverse, ever more welcoming, ever more open America and ever more globally engaged America.
And as you write that history, you will save the world. God bless you all and good luck.
