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Centrepiece Online | Summer 2007
Their Future Is Calling
Class of 2007
Although the press was certainly present for Centre’s 184th commencement on a glorious day in May, the Class of 2007 was probably most interested in meeting the day’s main speaker, Tim Russert, moderator of Meet the Press, the longest-running television program in history.
And meet him they did. Russert stood to shake the graduates’ hands as the diplomas were handed out.
“Graduating from Centre College has given you incredible advantages over others in your generation,” Russert told the 227 graduates sitting on the Newlin Hall stage. “The values you have been taught, the struggles you have survived, and the diploma you have received from Centre have set you up to succeed in the world.”
Student-body president Kevin Duke ’07, an English and history major from Fort Thomas, Ky., considered Russert’s visit an honor.
“I’m excited that such a huge name in the media world [came] to Centre,” he said. “Centre is really putting itself on the map.”
Duke recently completed an internship with Danville’s Advocate-Messenger and is now freelancing for the Kentucky Enquirer.
Russert flew to Danville directly after doing his Sunday morning show in Washington, D.C. At a brief news conference prior to the ceremony, he said a letter from Centre’s outgoing associate dean, Bill Johnston, and president, John A. Roush, convinced him to make his first trip to Centre. “The more I read, the more I was intrigued,” he said.
In addition to Meet the Press, Russert also anchors a weekly interview program on CNBC, is a political analyst for the NBC Nightly News and the Today show, and is senior vice president and Washington bureau chief of NBC News. The Washington Post credits him with coining the phrases “red state” and “blue state” to explain the nation’s political divide.
Russert, who received an honorary degree during the ceremony, started his remarks with several humorous anecdotes, including one he called his favorite Meet the Press story. In the 1992 election, he had Ross Perot, then running as a third-party candidate for president, on the show. When Russert asked Perot what he would do to solve the deficit, a problem Perot had previously called the most important facing the country, he responded, “What?” When Russert repeated the question, Perot said, “If I had known you were going to ask trick questions, I never would have come on the show!”
After grilling Perot, Russert continued, he caught a flight to New York. A flight attendant who had seen the show asked Russert his opinion of the man.
“Ma’am, I never comment about my guests or their positions on the issues,” he said he had replied. “I try to be objective down the line, but I’m endlessly curious. As a viewer, as a voter, and as a flight attendant, what did you think of Ross Perot?”
Her response, recalled Russert: “He strikes me as the kind of guy that would never return his tray table to the upright position.”
More seriously, Russert talked about some of his heroes—including his father, a World War II veteran who worked two blue-collar jobs while raising four children and about whom Russert wrote the best-selling memoir Big Russ and Me.
He then challenged the graduates to “become players in this extraordinary blessing called life.”
“You’ve been given an education that says it’s not enough to have a skill,” he said. “It’s not enough to have read all the books or to know all the facts. Values really do matter. Its only justification for existing is because it has a special mission—training young men and women to help shape and influence the moral tone and fiber of our nation and our world. And that means now you have a special obligation and responsibility.”
In closing he reminded the graduates that they’d better get busy because in only 2,300 weeks they’d be eligible for Social Security.
And what does the future hold for the Class of 2007? For the valedictorians, the future includes graduate school. Brian Grieb ’07, a biochemistry and molecular biology major from Louisville, has already started an M.D./Ph.D. program at Vanderbilt on an N.I.H. fellowship. Lauren Miller ’07 of Indianapolis is a government and Spanish major who will attend law school at Indiana University in the fall. She is one of about 20 graduates who are law-school bound. Six from the Class of 2007 are off to medical school.
The most popular major among the May graduates was anthropology/sociology, followed in descending order by English, Spanish, history, and biology, with 25.6 percent choosing two majors.
—D.F.J.
Centrepiece
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Phone: (859) 238-5717
Fax: (859) 238-5723
E-mail: alumnews@centre.edu
or johnsond@centre.edu
THEIR FUTURE IS CALLING: SAEs from the Class of
2007 whip out their phones to hear what their future has to say.
Meet the Press moderator Tim Russert shook hands with the 227 graduates.