[audience applauds]
(Deborah Bial) Oh, my gosh.
Are you guys okay?
[audience laughs]
(Deborah) Thank you so much!
I don't know what to do now.
I don't know what to do.
And I have a wardrobe malfunction, my zipper's broken on my robe.
[audience laughs]
(Deborah) Eric said it's okay,
I'm standing behind the podium and you can't see it.
[audience laughs]
(Deborah) Can you see it?
[audience laughs]
(Deborah) Okay.
You look really good, by the way.
(Audience member) Yeah, we do!
(Deborah) I know.
[laughs]
Thank you, President Oxtoby,
the Pomona Board of Trustees,
the wonderful Pomona faculty and staff.
It's an honor to be here,
getting an honorary degree with Helen and Vikram,
and my god, the student speakers that you have, Jamila and Ashley,
I'm so impressed.
[audience cheers and claps]
(Deborah) This is a good place.
And it is pretty and it's cold,
so I want to begin by saying congratulations to the Class of 2016.
It's a big deal to be here with your families,
who are sitting in raincoats and shivering a little,
but everyone is so proud of you.
I want to give a special shout out to Posse Eight,
who's graduating here today.
I'm incredibly honored to be graduating with you guys.
And I'll, hopefully you'll let me be part of your posse.
I want to take a moment just as an aside,
this is a complete aside from my speech,
to acknowledge President David Oxtoby.
[audience hollers]
He has announced, right?
That next year will be his last as Pomona's president,
and I would like to thank him personally for his partnership.
David, you've been a tremendous collaborator and friend,
bringing more than a hundred Posse scholars to this campus
including STEM scholars.
You've been acting as a powerful advocate,
I don't know if all of you realize how much,
for the promotion of diversity in higher education
everywhere across the country.
I admire and respect you,
and I know that everyone here will celebrate your tenure at this institution.
[audience applauds]
(Deborah) So I think there's about 400 of you sitting out there,
and you're on the cusp of the next part of your life.
It's one of those really special life moments, graduation.
But for the next few minutes
I'd like you to remember a time
when you were much, much younger.
Let me take you back.
It's 2004,
a few years only after 9-11.
This is what was happening.
George Bush was president.
He had declared a war on terror.
American forces were fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
That year the CIA acknowledged
that there had been no imminent threat
of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
This was the year that Ronald Reagan died,
and also the year that New York City began building the Freedom Towers
to replace the fallen towers of the World Trade Center.
In Massachusetts in 2004
the first legal same-sex marriage was performed.
The Red Sox won the World Series that year-
[audience cheers]
(Deborah) -- first time since 1918, by the way.
Google launched its IPO,
and Ron Chernow published his biography of Hamilton.
[audience laughs]
(Deborah) I don't know
if those of you graduating today remember that,
but maybe you remember
that the movies Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
and Shrek II came out that year.
[audience laughs and cheers]
(Deborah) Of course you might remember that,
because you were eight or nine or ten years old.
You were just a kid.
2004 news headlines may not be what you remember most.
As a kid, other things were on your mind.
I mean think about it,
think about being that kid.
Maxine Garcia, Goeun Park, Montez Brownlee, Alexander Palmer,
can you remember yourself then, at 9 years old?
What you looked like?
Can you all remember the clothes you liked to wear
when you were that age, right,
did you like to have your hair a certain way?
Were you tall or short?
Isaiah Boone, Benjamin Cohen, are you thinking about this?
[audience laughs]
(Deborah) Right? Were you shy, were you outgoing?
Was there something you really loved to do?
Do you remember your dreams
and what you wanted to be when you grew up?
Who did you look up to?
My guess is that people who were 20 or 21 or 22
were definitely people you thought of as responsible adults.
[audience laughs]
(Deborah) Well, so this made me want to talk to some people
who understand the profound responsibility
that you have now that you're graduating.
So earlier this month
I talked to 53 eight, and nine, and ten year olds.
I told them I was going to be talking to all of you,
and that I would tell you anything they wanted you to know.
I wanted to find out what was on their minds
and ask them what they wanted to see in the world
and see what they would want
by the time they graduate from college.
I asked them what they like,
what they want to be when they grow up,
I asked them about what world problem they would solve.
I thought well, maybe they'd have a message for you, right,
and it could kind of inform the responsibility you now have
as a Pomona graduate, as an adult.
And actually what they had to say was kind of interesting.
First of all, they were excited.
They truly loved the idea
that you were going to hear what they had to say.
It kind of filled my heart, you know?
They each filled out this worksheet that had 10 questions,
and there was this one little girl
who shyly asked my colleague,
"Will you make sure she sees mine?"
I know, I love that, oh my god, it's so cute.
And then we had this conversation.
And they were just wide-eyed and open and speaking at the same time,
and they were just straining to get a word in,
and so here's a snapshot, okay?
You might not be surprised
that they like video games, animals, and meatballs.
[audience laughs]
(Deborah) They like books, bubble gum, bunnies, drawing,
ice cream, jump rope, and making things explode.
One says, "I really love my mommy and daddy."
Another, "I like to be bossy."
[audience laughs]
(Deborah) When they grow up they want to be a police officer,
the best soccer player in the world,
a doctor "because doctors help people",
a rapper, a DJ, a singer "because I like to sing",
a veterinarian "because I love animals",
and a wrestler "because it's cool."
When they grow up,
they want to be the President because,
"I want to tell the world to be happy and non-violent."
They want to be an inventor, a track superstar,
a chemist, a teacher.
Sound familiar?
Yeah.
One wants to do makeup and hair.
One wants to work for the INS.
The little girl who likes to be bossy wants to be a lawyer
because she is bossy and doesn't take no for an answer.
[audience laughs]
(Deborah) No, this is what they said!
I asked them what worries them about their future.
They worry about the things you might expect.
Big things that seem beyond their control.
They worry about kids getting lost,
"that I won't be with my mom every day,"
I know all you moms out there.
They worry about school getting harder,
kidnapping, bullying, and hate.
One little girl wants the world to be rid of all spiders.
They worry about pollution,
tigers and pandas going extinct,
they worry about dying and the world ending.
They worry that robots will take over the earth.
I know, something I hadn't really considered.
But they also worry about things
you might not typically expect of an eight or nine or ten year old.
I know that when I was nine,
I wasn't thinking about the things they brought up.
I had a ponytail and I had braces.
I had a doll I loved,
she also had a ponytail.
With a knob on her back I could make her hair long or short.
I worried about the universe being too big,
I worried about dying, and like that little girl,
I worried a lot about spiders.
But these kids, on their worksheets and in their conversations
seemed to be aware of today's problems and challenges
in a much more personal way.
They knew a lot about Donald Trump.
Of the 53 students who completed the worksheet,
more than a third of them wrote that they were afraid of him.
One little boy said,
"no one should be sent to another place without their family."
To my surprise,
their conversation focused heavily on racism and hate.
They worry that the next President will keep Muslims out,
or "will deport my parents."
They began a conversation
during which they explained that they are worried that
all black people could be sent to Africa.
One said,
"For me, I am worried that
the next President will bring back racism,
because he's going to send all black people to Africa
and then he's going to kick Mexicans out,
so only white people can have the whole New York to themselves."
I found this heartbreaking.
While they are picking up a lot from their parents,
they're also dwelling in a place of fear
that we've formerly reserved for adults.
It is possible that there is a shift in what kids think about today.
It may have to do with social media and TV,
the 24-hour breaking news
that flashes by them in their living rooms or on their computers.
The pop-up blogging, tweeting, texting culture
surrounds us with news flashes.
They see it, too.
The television is constantly telling us to be afraid of
what could potentially happen,
from terror attacks to the next most horrible storm.
We are quick to give up our civil liberties,
or run to the store to stock up on emergency items
that we don't really need.
Kids pick up on this.
The truth is there are many problems that we have let fester.
My generation has, quite frankly, failed yours.
Did we make the world the way you would have wanted it to be?
I don't believe we have.
These things that scare kids today scare us all.
We are still fighting for peace, for equal rights,
for equal treatment, for equal opportunity.
Women still make 79 cents for every dollar a man makes.
The United States Senate is 93% white and 80% male.
And these are our representatives.
The kids are right.
Over the past 40 years,
we have lost 50% of the world's wildlife.
The kids are right.
There's too much killing.
In 2015 alone,
those with guns killed more than 13,000 people
in the United States.
This country is far from the flying cars
and teleportation they dream of.
Our infrastructure is crumbling,
our bridges, our tunnels, our roads,
and our schools need major repair.
There are families who are afraid for their safety,
they are those who want to come here but are kept out,
and those who are afraid they will be forced to leave.
And the kids are right.
There's too much hate.
A recent national poll that CNN did
found that 49% of Americans
believe that racism is a big problem.
These things are scary for kids, as they are for us,
but we have a special responsibility to make them feel safe.
Not feel safe, be safe.
I asked them about their dreams for the future.
Of course, the future seemed abstract to them,
but they had ideas about it anyway.
They want cool technology.
They want the future to be peaceful, caring, and happy.
They want the whole world to have hope and faith.
Their ideas were reasonable.
One told me, "I think the President should make sure
there's peace around the world
and you don't just start kicking people out of where they live
and start sending them somewhere else."
They thought there should be talking instead of violence,
including in the Oval Office.
They thought the President should just talk to people
and reason with them.
For you specifically,
they wanted you to know that when they get to college,
they want the world to be beautiful.
One said, "I think it's helpful for college people"
that's you-
[audience laughs]
(Deborah) "--to know that everyone has the responsibility to listen,
be a good student,
and clean up after themselves."
[audience laughs]
(Deborah) "Everyone has to use teamwork and work together."
When did we lose these basic principles of behavior?
Do we remember ourselves at this age?
We were all there, weren't we?
Everybody!
We had imagination.
Maybe this was when we were at our most honest,
and our most trusting.
So what is the responsibility of adults today?
First of all we have to act like adults.
The children explained clearly that adults shouldn't smoke-
[audience chuckles]
they should be mature,
pleasant and truthful,
respectful and smart.
They should be nice.
They should listen, and please no screaming.
[audience laughs]
(Deborah) If you have been paying attention to our current political situation,
it's painfully clear that in this respect we have lost our way.
Second, we need to do all we can to protect our idealism.
It is what is expected of us
from the most important citizens of this country,
little kids.
In 2015, millennials became the largest and most diverse generation
in the workforce.
Researchers say you are idealists,
and while some criticize this aspect of your age group,
I say keep your idealism!
In fact, do everything you can to protect it.
It's a tricky thing to balance,
acting like an adult and remaining idealistic.
But you can do it.
It's the only way to create a world
where the dreams of little kids can come true.
You're sitting here today at the edge of opportunity.
You have so much power and so much reach,
much more reach than any generation before you.
You have the same tools that we had.
You can work hard,
you can vote,
you can speak out.
But you have a whole set of new tools at your fingertips, literally.
And that can help make the world not only better,
but a little closer to the nine year olds' ideal.
So I'm talking to you guys individually, right,
John Albright out there, and Janet Herrera-
[audience screams]
(Deborah) Right?
Kyra Sweeney and Paul Carter and Avi Sheldon, right?
Katherine Fortson, Daisy Adams, Dion Boyd.
[audience screams]
(Deborah) We all remember being nine, right?
We trusted the adults.
You're in the same position as these kids, really.
When we hit adulthood,
we somehow see our current selves as separate
from our childhood selves.
But the dreams of nine year olds don't really change
when we turn 21.
Maybe you're a little more practical now,
but your idealism is still there.
Thank goodness.
Today you're graduating.
And this rite of passage is one more declaration of your adulthood.
You're now the adults
to whom the responsibility of protecting the world is given.
You are now the adults that these 53 little nine year olds believe in.
There are approximately 4.1 million nine year olds in the country today.
We entrust their future to you.
In only a little more than a decade
they will be sitting here in your chairs.
They will walk in the footsteps you place on this platform.
It will be their turn.
Today it's yours,
so don't forget the nine year old in yourself,
and all the nine year olds
that are looking to you to pave the way.
Stay close to their dreams and let them remind you of yours.
You can do extraordinary things in your life and in the world.
They need you, and we all do.
Congratulations, everyone.
[applauds and cheers]