ROANOKE TIMES

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, May 22, 1994                   TAG: 9405220081
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium


COLLEGES GET TV JOURNALISTS TO GIVE GRADUATES LAST LESSON

From Connie Chung and Ted Koppel to Cokie Roberts and Andy Rooney, television personalities - mostly from the network news divisions - are the speakers of choice at many college commencements this year.

"Television newscasters are role models for our students," said Dale Rogers Marshall, the president of Wheaton College, a small liberal arts school in Norton, Mass., who signed Chung, co-anchor of the "CBS Evening News," to speak Saturday.

"It says something about the centrality of the media in our time."

Brother Patrick Ellis, president of Catholic University of America in Washington, said: "The Second Coming wouldn't please everyone, but in Ted Koppel we believe we have one of the more thoughtful - you could almost say philosophical - people in the media. You want the students to have one final blast of that before they leave."

Koppel assailed television, asserting that truth, ethics and morality did not fare well in the medium. "We now communicate with everyone and say absolutely nothing. We have reconstructed the Tower of Babel, and it is a television antenna."

It also appears that television reporters and news anchors are attractive to colleges and universities this year because they are seen as deft commentators on society at a time when universities are guarded on issues of sex, race and ethnicity.

The lobbying for the right speaker has been intense, for if luring a star to the campus does not count as much as having a winning football team or winning a Nobel Prize, some say it comes close.

Sherwood Small, chairman of the honorary degree committee at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., said: "The choice of a commencement speaker is important because it positions the school in the public mind and also because it's the last thing the students will remember about the school."

Among the TV journalists scheduled to create these memories are Robert MacNeil, executive editor and co-anchor of television's MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour, who will speak today at Clark; and Brit Hume, an ABC News correspondent, who will speak today at the University of Virginia.

Last week, Judy Woodruff, the CNN anchor, urged women at Duke University not to fear combining a career with raising a family. "I'm a better journalist because of the joys of my family," she said.

President Clinton spoke last week at Gallaudet University in Washington. He will address the Naval Academy on Wednesday.

Former President Bush said Saturday at the University of Houston that even if "reality bites," that shouldn't stop young people from touching the lives of others.

Ross Perot is scheduled to deliver the commencement address today at Boston University.

David Morrison, a partner of Morrison and Tyson Communications, which serves colleges as a publicity consultant, said, "Education has taken its lumps in recent years and many college administrators feel as never before that they need friends in Washington."

Sen. John Warner, R-Va., spoke at James Madison University at Harrisonburg, and Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Abingdon, spoke last week at Roanoke College.



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