Cokie Roberts urges Wheaton students to respect and participate in government

[Click here to view Commencement day photos, read the keynote address, listen to an audio podcast and more.]

[NORTON, Mass.]--Journalist and author Cokie Roberts told the 385 members of Wheaton College's Class of 2006 that while it might be popular to denigrate and disrespect the government, it is a dangerous sentiment because government binds us together as a nation.

"We have no nationhood except our government," said Roberts, the award-winning senior news analyst for National Public Radio (NPR) and political commentator for ABC News. "We have no common ethnicity, race, history, religion, even language--despite what the Senate is up to right now. If you look at what's happening in the rest of the world today, you understand the miracle of this nation."

"I know that that's not a popular thought or these are not popular people," Roberts said of politicians. "And some of it's their own fault. Right now they have misbehaved badly. Some of it is their fault because they tend to run against the institutions they serve in rather than admire them and respect them. Some of it is your fault, our fault as citizens, because to be leaders you have to be good citizens and allow people to take the leadership, not punish them the minute that they do something that you think is not in your immediate self-interest. Some of it is certainly our fault in the press for always jumping on public servants and politicians and denigrating them as professional politicians as if that is some epithet of disgrace."

[The transcript of Wheaton's commencement address and high-resolution photos will be posted at http://www.wheatoncollege.edu/cr/cr2006 by 2 p.m. on Saturday, May 20.]

Roberts has won numerous awards at NPR, including the highest honor in public radio, the Edward R. Murrow Award. She was also the first broadcast journalist to win the highly prestigious Everett McKinley Dirksen Award for coverage of Congress. Roberts is the recipient of numerous other broadcasting awards, including a 1991 Emmy for her contribution to the ABC News special, ''Who is Ross Perot?'' She is the author of the national bestseller We Are Our Mother's Daughters as well as Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation.

In her remarks, Roberts also honored three Wheaton alumni who have been lifelong friends and role models: ethicist Patricia King '63, CBS news reporter Lesley Stahl '63 and Sister Anne Dyer '59, who is retiring this weekend as headmistress at Roberts' alma mater, the Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart in Bethesda, Maryland.

Among the more than 600 alumnae/i who participated in Reunion Weekend were Lois Mansfield Keeler and Gertrude Forshee Peatfield from the Class of 1931 who came to celebrate their 75th reunion. The honorary degree recipients include Roberts; Kathleen M. Dennehy, commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Correction and a member of the college's Class of 1976; Wheaton Trustee Patricia Higgins Arnold, a longtime volunteer leader in education and a member of the college's Class of 1966; and Elspeth Davies Rostow, the Stiles Professor Emerita in American Studies at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas.

Wheaton students and alumni won 17 prestigious national scholarships this academic year. Senior Alex Dewar of Portland, Ore., will study environmental change at Oxford as Wheaton's third Rhodes Scholar since 2001. Senior Alexandra Cheney of Santa Monica, Calif., is one of 50 students nationwide to win the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship; the award will support a year of travel and research. Five members of the Class of 2006 won Fulbright scholarships this year: Jeremy Berger of Milford, N.H., and Lesley Dean of Norton, Mass., will teach English in Germany; Zoë Lees of Santa Fe, N.M., will teach English and student indigenous medical practices in Malaysia; Joshua Purvis of Eureka, Calif., will teach English and study the post-Communism Catholic Church in Slavakia; and Stephen Wulff of Barrington, Ill., will teach English in South Korea. Seniors Paul Benson of New York City and Lisa Shure of Wilmington, Mass., were selected by the Japanese government to teach English in Japan. Senior Brittany Krupica of Wheeling, W.V., won a Rotary Scholarship to study international environmental law at Cambridge University in England. Junior Stanley Ellicott of Avon, Maine, received a Fulbright-Hays award to study in Russia this spring, while junior Valerie Tobia of Falmouth, Mass., won Wheaton's first Gilman Scholarship to study in South Africa. Four seniors--Anne Belz of Edina, Minn., Dahlia Freundenthal of Brooklyn, N.Y., Sara Hudson of Huntersville, N.C., and and Emilie Kapp of Cleveland, Ohio--won French Teaching Assistantships. Finally, alumnus Adar Cohen '04 of Peterborough, N.H., won Wheaton's first Mitchell Scholarship to pursue a graduate degree in international peace studies at Trinity College in Dublin.

Wheaton is a highly selective college of the liberal arts and sciences with a student body of 1,550. It is a member of the Twelve College Exchange, which also includes Amherst, Bowdoin, Dartmouth, Mount Holyoke, Trinity, Wellesley and Wesleyan.