IN CELEBRATION OF EDUCATION

For two days this week (18th and 19th) 120th St. (between Amsterdam and Broadway Avs) was closed to vehicular traffic to give the men and women of the walking kind a free rein to the main campus of one of education and academic freedom's most famous homes - Columbia University - for a 3 in 1 celebration. NYC at that place, at that time, was not unforgiving despite the impression; when the occasion calls for it, even limos do not get in the pedestrians' way.

The words of poet C. Milosz was with me as I stood in that line stretching for miles on end heading towards the bastion. When I murmured 'I am here', I knew when to witness not only the changing of fortune between motorists and pedestrians, but also the recognition of young men and women who one day will direct the path of our children towards personal and societal fulfillment. The words 'I am here', after all, not only served to confirm but also establish - the thought, the belief, the resolve.

I was there.

For two days, I was there when Columbia University held commencement exercises for one of its colleges (on the 1st day) and for the entire University (2nd day), made more special by the coincidence of its 250th academic year and the 50th anniversary of the landmark case Brown vs. Board of Education.

If you were a Columbian, the pride for being one was somehow ensconced in the theme Celebrating Columbians Ahead Of Their Time, or how CU's students, then and now, helped shaped the world and made their mark - while still being students.

If you were not a Columbian, like me, you could have known to make do by being in the throng of 30,000 covering every square foot of the campus grounds on the 19th and listened when speakers inspired and cheered when the candidates marched: the Pomp and Circumstance and Academic procession brought goose bumps, clear memories from my own, but this one was totally different, each group representing each college making a last mark with grandeur - a candidate from Dental and Oral Surgery carried a giant toothbrush; those from International and Public Affairs waved tiny flags of their mother countries (I spotted three from the Philippines); and those from Engineering and Applied Science made cacophony from their little rattlers that brought the crowd to its spent feet.

The presence and speech of Jonathan Kozol on the 18th was more than enough to sum up the enormous responsibility that all these graduates have in their hands. Education, after all, is acquired with the accompanying duty to give to others in return. And so to my friends, to whom the privilege was bestowed, I cannot be a Jonathan Kozol in deed but could be a Ralph Ellison in words and challenge, via Homer A. Barbee: 'Now you must take on the burden. Lead them the rest of the way.'

Congratulations!