Online
edition of
June 12, 2000
 
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Environment getting short
shrift, Annan tells graduates
BY KATHLEEN O'TOOLE
Tears flowed freely under
mortarboards as the final strains of the Stanford Hymn,
sung by the chamber chorale, signaled the closing chapter
for Stanford's 109th graduating class on Sunday morning,
June 11, and the final time President Gerhard Casper
would confer the degrees.
Under the mildest
Commencement-day sun in years and on a new, collapsible
stage built solely for Commencement mornings, Casper
conferred 4,815 degrees, bringing the total to 36,506
during his eight-year presidency, which ends Aug. 31.
Outgoing
President Gerhard Casper, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi
Annan and Provost and President-designate John Hennessy
enter Stanford Stadium for the university's 109th
Commencement Sunday. (Photo
by Rod Searcey)
The Commencement ceremony
drew approximately 25,000 people to Stanford Stadium
where Kofi Annan, secretary-general of the United
Nations, and Casper provided dignified, serious remarks
to counterbalance the silly processional antics of a
healthy portion of graduating seniors, a Stanford
tradition.
In what is known as the
"wacky walk," students paraded into the stadium
dressed in modified black robes -- portraying everything
from M&M candies and Pokémon to Chinese dragons and
yellow schoolbuses. The lush field that is normally
reserved for NCAA sports was quickly spattered with
pick-up games of horseshoe, twister, tetherball, croquet,
bowling and baseball, with a cardboard tube for a bat and
paper wads for balls. There were watergun fights, twist
and ballroom dancing demonstrations, rope jumping
displays, plenty of seniors talking to their relatives in
the bleachers via cell phones, and a few carrying
political banners urging the end of U.N. economic
sanctions against Iraq or endorsing a "living
wage" for all.
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Annan, aware of the
Silicon Valley's reputation for leading the
communications revolution, prompted laughter when he said
he suspected some in the audience were "sending each
other e-mails with your Palm Pilots even as I
speak!" In this world of "collapsing borders
and connections among people," the secretary-general
urged his audience to take time to reflect upon the
precarious state of the globe's natural environment and
build a "new ethic of global stewardship."
Casper, during his turn at
the podium, also reminded the graduates of the nature of
the global village. If the village were made up of just
100 people with the existing human ratios remaining the
same, he said, 60 villagers would be Asian, 14 would be
from North and South America combined, 13 would be from
Africa and 13 from Europe.
"Three would own a
computer and only one would have a college
education," he said. "As that one in 100 with a
college education, much will be asked of you in
addressing the problems of the world you now enter."
Annan, expanding upon a
report he made to the U.N. General Assembly in April,
said he has been shocked not so much by the poor state of
the environment as by the "state of the debate on
the environment. In a nutshell, the need for sustainable
development is failing to register on the political radar
screen. That is something that should concern us all, not
least because half the world's jobs depend directly on
the sustainability of ecosystems."
In contrast to last year's
commencement speaker (U.S. poet laureate Robert Pinsky),
who urged graduates to "honor the past and to convey
its treasures beyond," Annan suggested that the
Class of 2000 break with the tradition of his generation
by showing more concern for those to be born 50 or 100
years from now.
"The inescapable
global reality is that we are plundering our children's
future," he said. If current consumption patterns
continue, scientists estimate that two out of every three
people on earth will live in "water stressed"
countries by 2025, the globe's "food-security"
supply will be threatened by mid-century and global
warming will accelerate, he said.
Yet during 18 months of
planning discussions by the General Assembly for the
Millennium Summit to be held in New York this September,
he said, "environmental concerns were hardly
mentioned at all. Policy-makers seem to be giving the
environment frighteningly low priority. Perhaps they are
overwhelmed by other concerns. Perhaps they are
deliberately avoiding tough choices."
Annan criticized
"those in a position to make a difference" for
framing environmental management issues as "an
intractable conflict between economy and ecology, when in
fact sustainable development offers a road-map for
reconciling the two." He urged the students to
implement "green accounting," the practice of
taking into account the costs inflicted by pollutants in
measuring the value of products and services. He also
noted that the United States is the largest producer of
greenhouse gases and has yet to ratify the Kyoto Protocol
on climate change, which, if implemented, would begin to
control world carbon emissions.
Annan's speech, and later
Casper's remarks, were briefly interrupted by shouts from
individuals who sat at the east end of the stadium crowd,
about 60 people in all. Some protesters carried signs
opposing Ethiopia's ongoing invasion of disputed
territory along its border with Eritrea, while others
protested the U.N. Security Council's program of economic
sanctions against Iraq. One banner, paraded repeatedly
through the bleachers, said, "Lift sanctions on
Iraq; One million civilians dead." An airplane flew
over the stadium before the formal ceremonies started,
trailing the banner "U.N./U.S. end sanctions on Iraq
now," part of an "educational protest"
organized by some Stanford and local community groups who
say the 9-year-old sanctions program has been both
inhumane and counterproductive to its stated goal of
removing weapons of mass destruction from Iraq. (See
related story on page 4.)
As Casper conferred
degrees on the candidates -- 1,799 bachelor's degrees,
2,094 master's degrees and 922 doctorates -- he repeated
the same formula eight times, once for undergraduates and
once for each of the seven schools. Halfway through, the
high-spirited crowd began to join him in the refrain as
he admitted candidates to the "rights . . .
responsibilities . . . and privileges" of their
degrees.
"That was very good,
" the president joked. "It shows you can still
learn."
Casper then used the
occasion to "express the gratitude of countless
children in remembrance of a Stanford alumnus, who on
behalf of a merciful nation helped alleviate the scars of
war and hunger twice in the course of the 20th
century."
The reference was to
Herbert Hoover, who graduated in Stanford's first class
and, before becoming president of the United States,
organized a private relief agency to deliver food to
Belgians when they were facing famine at the beginning of
World War I. President Truman later called upon Hoover to
take charge of famine relief in Europe after World War
II.
"At the end of World
War II, I was a 7-year-old living in the devastated port
city of Hamburg," Casper said. "There and then,
I heard the name Hoover for the first time as the label
attached to American food supplies that reached our
schools. They were known as 'Hoover foods.'" No one
could have predicted then, he said, that he would wind up
as president of Stanford, living in the Hoover family
home, which Hoover and his wife, Lou Henry Hoover, gave
to the university in 1945.
Stanford, he told the new
graduates, stands for "common purpose, for
fortitude, faith and good cheer. It stands for diversity.
It stands for generosity, for doing, as Jane and Leland
Stanford did, something for 'other people's' sons and
daughters. It stands for understanding the importance of
higher education and its support.
"Above all," he
concluded, it stands for "continuous commitment to
the power of reason and the unceasing process of
inquiry."
Of the new graduates, 314
were graduated with departmental honors, 260 with
university distinction, 162 with multiple majors, 79 with
dual bachelor's degrees and 318 with co-terminal master's
and bachelor's degrees.
Zuri Ray-Alladice
contributed to this report. SR
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