As proud parents watched, about 400 students received their diplomas during Pomona College's 111th Commencement on May 16 in Bridges Auditorium. The graduates had come to the College from as far away as Anchorage and Honolulu and Andover, Mass. Their majors ranged from Linguistics to Latin American Studies, from Mathematics to Molecular Biology. And before the Class of 2004 moved out into the "real world," they heard some final words of wit, wisdom and reminiscing.


Senior class president Jacqueline Karis Wong-Hernandez spoke of her terrible freshman year, "hands down the worst year of my life." That was before she transferred to Pomona. "Best decision I ever made," she said. "I found an incredible community of people who lived, laughed, learned and loved together."



"One of the first things I realized was that Pomona is small, said senior class speaker Olatunji Abdulrahman Balogun. "You know everybody. I'm looking out at the audience and I know 99.3 percent of you guys ... The fact that everyone is at least familiar with everyone else lends to the sense of community that I think is central to ... people's experience here at Pomona."


Veteran TV newsman Walter Cronkite, dubbed the "most trusted man in America," delivered the keynote address. He began by painting a bleak picture of the world graduates will be facing, noting the Iraq War, an environmental crisis, collapsing infrastructure, the budget deficit and a lagging educational system.

Video of Cronkite's Speech | View Pictures

On the Iraq War, he accused the Bush Administration of playing the patriotism card "to camouflage its lack of a plan to extricate us from its errors."  But he also criticized presumptive Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry for failing to offer a detailed plan that would lead to a "dignified withdrawal with honor."

After laying out America's challenges, Cronkite expressed confidence that the graduates could make things better. "All these problems I enumerated here can be solved or at least mitigated a great deal by an enlightened population and courageous leadership," he said. "You, the class of '04, are particularly qualified by the education you have received here to provide both the leadership and the enlightened population."

He made the case that terrorism is fueled by the envy the deprived peoples of the world hold for the richer nations. He called on students to go out into the world, helping to build economies and spread the American ideals of freedom of speech, press and religion.

"We must put idealism on at least an equal footing with practicality," said Cronkite. "We are going to make it, we human beings ... if we work to bring to reality the achievement of peace." Read Entire Speech.

College President David Oxtoby ended his charge to the Class of '04 with these words: "As you leave this hall today, you will carry with you the fruits of a four-year Pomona College education: a deepened capacity to analyze and to create, a broadened perspective on knowledge and on the world around us. It is my fervent hope that this will be but the beginning of a lifelong education, and that in many and varied ways you will find opportunities to give back to others what has been given to you. Congratulations to all of you!"