"FOLLOW YOUR DREAMS," RENDELL TELLS UNIVERSITY OF RICHMOND GRADUATES
May 13, 2001
"Follow your dreams," former Philadelphia Mayor Edward G. Rendell told about 825 graduates of the University of Richmond today.
"You will find that people are always telling you what you can't do," Rendell said. Don't listen to them, he advised. If we listened to naysayers, Rendell said, "there would be no explorers, no scientists, no great books."
"Don't be afraid to fail," Rendell also advised the class of 2001. "Everyone getting an honorary degree here today has failed. There is no reason to feel embarrassed for failure. The only reason for embarrassment is for not trying."
Finally, Rendell said, "Understand your success should be defined only by one person: you. Don't look at the criteria of society." As mayor and chair of the Democratic National Committee, Rendell said he had met some of the wealthiest and most famous people in America. Many of them, however, were "bitterly unhappy despite their success."
Rendell told the graduates that happiness, not wealth and fame, "is the true reward for everything you do in life."
Rendell also shared with the graduates his "2000 Election Lessons." As chair of the DNC, he said, he was on the firing line during the "most controversial November in your lifetime or the lifetime of anyone in this great hall."
The first lesson is that every vote counts. After the 2000 election, Rendell said, "there's no excuse ever to say, 'My vote doesn't count.'"
Second, it showed that American democracy bent very badly, but it did not break. "Think of any other country going through the 36 days in as peaceful a fashion as we did," he said.
Third, it showed the need for Congress to provide a pool of matching funds for every precinct to have technology for the best voting machines.
Finally, we should end the electoral college, Rendell said.
"The electoral college flies in the face of one person, one vote," he said; and the argument that the electoral college insures that little states will not be ignored is false, he claimed. Already politicians are concentrating only on "battleground states," he said. As chairman of the DNC, Rendell said he authorized expenditures in only 21 of the 50 states.
As mayor of Philadelphia from 1992-2000, Rendell led the comeback of a city once derided as "the standard for municipal distress in the '90s." The New York Times described Philadelphia's transformation under Rendell's leadership as "one of the most stunning turnarounds in recent urban history."
Rendell received an honorary doctoral degree during the ceremonies, as did James T. Laney, former president of Emory and former ambassador to South Korea; Neil deGrasse Tyson, Frederick P. Rose director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City; K. Randel Everett, president of the John Leland Center for Theological Studies in Falls Church; and William B. Graham, retired president of The Consulting Company.