Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 23, 1993 TAG: 9305230072
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"Ideas with which we disagree - so long as they remain ideas and not conduct which interferes with the rights of others - should be confronted with argument and persuasion, not suppression," Rehnquist said, alluding to disputes on college campuses over "politically correct speech."
"In the traditional view, the university educates, but it does not indoctrinate; it increases your knowledge . . . but does not insist that you choose any particular point of view," Rehnquist said.
"On occasion, one senses that some universities today no longer fully accept this traditional point of view. One senses that for them there is an orthodoxy or sort of party line from which one departs at one's peril."
Rehnquist urged the graduates not to define themselves by their careers and to invest their time wisely.
"Time is a wasting asset. Most of us realize this truth too late to avoid spending a lot of time unwisely," the 68-year-old jurist said.
The school awarded 4,806 degrees.
Students at Virginia Commonwealth, Virginia Military Institute and Eastern Virginia Medical School also graduated Saturday.
In Richmond, Louis Sullivan, former secretary of health and human services and president of the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, told 4,200 graduates of Virginia Commonwealth to seek the heroic life in response to the "cry of the human heart."
"I found such a response in Harlem, where Mother Hale sat up each night comforting babies abandoned by mothers addicted to crack; on the west side of Chicago where physicians and nurses work in underserved areas to bring health services to those at risk; in Miami where physicians, social workers, and others made extraordinary sacrifices to provide trauma relief in the wake of a hurricane's destruction; and on the VCU campus, where your outreach programs foster a positive social activism to end violence, discrimination and isolation.
"In the heroic life, there is no blame game, no gridlock, no finger-pointing and no hesitation to serve. Instead there is the courage of conviction, the compassion of the spirit and the commitment to make life better for all of us."
In Norfolk, U.S. Surgeon General Antonia Novello told 119 graduates of Eastern Virginia Medical School that medicine has to leave the ivory towers and get into the community.
"In the future we will need less emphasis on publishing and more on practicing, less emphasis on tenure and more on teaching, less grantsmanship and more grit," Novello said.
In Charlottesville, NBC news anchorman Tom Brokaw spoke to about 6,000 University of Virginia students and others in a valediction exercise. The school's graduation is today.
The senior class announced $175,000 in pledges for a scholarship fund in the wake of rising tuition costs.
by CNB