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Four years ago we thousand arrived at this place. Apprehensive of what we would find. Uncertain of what we would accomplish. Yet committed to accept- ing the cha llenge which this institution has presented to American youth for the better part of this nation's history. Tomorrow we leave Yale College. Apprehensive of what we will find. Uncertain of what we wi ll accom- plish. Yet committed to accepting the cha llenge which this nation h.ii.spresented to Yale graduates for the better part of this institution's history. At a moment of such conseq uence, it is good that we pause. To weigh the things you and r have done here. For, they have been many, and we think this college con- siderably different today from four years ago because we were a part of it, for however brief a time. To consider the persons that we have become here. For, in her own quiet and, for each of us, rather per- sonal manner, Yale has left her impact on you and me. Perhaps she even has the satisfaction of knowing that, in the last ana lysis, the rather intangible difference she has made in our lives far surpasses the reforms we have introduced to hers, however momentous they sometimes might have seemed to us. After all, we de- part. Yale remains. To recall the spirit and dedication of those rare men, known to each of us particularly, who in the classroom, or from the pulpit, or in the demon stration provided leadership and hope when all about us such qualities seemed of limited availability indeed. Jn a sense neither our gatheri ng nor my speaking furthers such reflection. We best do our own. You helped bring co-education to Yale, you con- tributed to curriculum reform. You led a football team, you a magazine. You stood with Coffin, you chee red Buckley. You became more visionary, you more cynica l. When asked what these years meant to us, we give a thousand individual answers. We must. We knew Yale in a thousand different ways. To presume, as a class orator finds himself required, to draw from these widely varying experiences of the past a common ly held perspective on the future has to seem somewhat irregular to any liberally educated man, encouraged to appreciate and defend diversity. Jn so presuming I, as I trust my predecessors did and my successors will, pondered carefu lly the ancient ad- vice of Dionysius the Elder, who ought to intimidate every would-be orator with the concise counsel, "let thy speech be better than silence, or be silent". I do not hesitate to confess my belief that, in this particular task at least, silence is always the better. And we all owe it to ourselves, sometime soon after the conclusion of the joyous and nostalgic events of these final days, to probe a bit into what these years were all about, and to determine how prominent or inconsequential a position they will hold in our larger view of life. This suggestion, however, does not free me from my task, for somewhere in the development of man's social customs it was generally accepted, for better or worse, that on such occasions as these the spoken word possessed value. And so, recognizing their limi- tation but acknowledging their necessity, I present words-and perhaps some thought, in observation rather than conclusion, about that future task which, in view of our experience together at Yale, I think ought to concern us most today. Precedent dictates that I exhort you to confront the great social questions lying ahead in what usually has been termed either "the outside" or "the rea l" world, in contradistinction to the Yale environment. I depart from precedent. First, because there is no reason to inform this au- dience of the specific ills in our society which awa it your energy, no necessity to awaken your awareness to the cause for action. Who here is unaware that Vietnam must cease to diminish us, that race must cease tO divide us? Who has not recognized that pov- erty must cease to debase us, that our foreign fears must cease to dominate us? We know all that. Even more importantly, this society knows that we know it, and are not prepared to accept it. So my appeal is not that you shou ld act. You w ill. With co urage, sincerity, conviction, and advantage to this nation. Just a few years ago, a member of the graduating class stood where I now stand and noted the irony of his generation's being called revolutionary when they seldom confronted the government, rarely took to the streets, and never condoned violence. That paradox has perished-which leads to my other reason for breaking precedent. The real world is no longer outside the university. Indeed the growth of the phenomenon has been so extensive in the past few years that documentation appears redundant. Whethe r the issue has been mili- tary training programs, indu strial recruitment efforts, the right of free speech for all points of view, or a hundred other questions, the university has become a primary and often bloody battleground for the waging of non-academic wars. This is an extraordinary devel- opment which ought to provide every thinking man, and especially each of us, with something to reflect upon. Essentially, what we, who have had some role in changing this college, might wish to ask ourselves to- day is to what exten t a university should be a commu- nity committed to the precipitation of social change as we ll as the communication of human values. This inquir y, I wou ld hope, can direct ou r atten- tion, for a moment or two, to the dimensions of that tradition, that vital tradition, wh ich we have inherited here. This is to subordinate, but not to ignore, the transition we make tomorrow. If we specu late about this question, I think we gain insight worth possessing about what we might well take from Yale. The question, in itself, is complex, for both goals should concern a modern university and these aims are not mutually exclusive. In answering the question, therefore, we seek relative priorities. Only the classi- cist obsessed with antiquity or the revolutionary blind- ed by urgency would offer simple, inflexible judg- ments.