Vol. 38, No. 18

1-5-2005
By: Joni Bentz Seal

Merritt shares three essential elements of citizenship with autumn quarter graduates

While most seniors are busy taking final exams and preparing for good-byes, Deborah Jones Merritt, director of the John Glenn Institute for Public Service and Public Policy at Ohio State, commended the 2,000 graduates in St. John Arena Dec. 12 for concluding their college career by performing one of their greatest civic duties: voting.

“Most graduates wrap up their studies as job seekers, applying for jobs,” said the John Deaver Drinko/Baker and Hostetler Chair in Law at the Moritz College of Law. “You spent your last quarter as decision makers, interviewing the two finalists for the most powerful job on Earth. And after you and the rest of Ohio had hired the next president of the United States, you beat Michigan by 16 points!”

As the keynote speaker for autumn quarter commencement, Merritt shared with graduates what she considers the three essential elements of citizenship: community, dialogue and collective action.
“These foundations never change, but each generation creates its own form of citizenship, its own way to lead the community,” she said, as she addressed what Ohio State’s motto, Education for Citizenship, means to a new generation — a generation shaped by the Internet and Sept. 11, just as the Depression, Pearl Harbor and the Civil Rights movement shaped the ones before.

Community
None of us chooses to become a citizen, said the recipient of the university’s Distinguished Lecturer, Scholar and Diversity Enhancement Award honors. We are citizens as soon as we are born into a community and every time we connect with a new community. We can only choose what type of citizens we will be.

“What will you choose?,” she asked the graduates. “At Ohio State, we have taught you to be citizens who reflect on your values, who honor your principles but are not afraid to examine them. We have taught you to be open to new ideas, to talk with people who see the world differently than you do, and to weigh their perspectives.”

Dialogue
Merritt underscored the need for honest dialogue among citizens, believing it helps sharpen beliefs, reveal new ways of thinking and explore abstract principles like justice or equality. Every citizen needs a set of principles to guide him or her, to confirm what he or she stands for, and to uphold without compromise, she said. “At the same time, we must remember that America’s great legacy is to question the status quo and search fearlessly for freedom, even when our inquiries generate answers that at first seem alien or uncomfortable.”

Most people — and most communities — Merritt said, are wrong before they are right, with the most successful knowing when to change their minds. Through history, Merritt reminded the audience, Americans have changed their minds about slavery, about segregated schools and about “white only” jobs. They’ve changed their minds about the ability of women to practice law, run businesses and transplant hearts.

“We changed our minds — twice — about selling alcohol, and we changed our minds about allowing 18-year-olds to vote,” she said. “The great challenge you will face is knowing when to hold fast to your beliefs and when to change your minds, and there is no easy answer to this challenge. The best approach is to talk openly with one another. Through dialogue, a community discovers what is true and what is false, what seemed right but will no longer work, and how we will make tomorrow even better than today.”

Collective action
Of course, a better tomorrow cannot be built on talk, Merritt said. Citizens must come together to shape a common vision, then take collective action to make that vision real.

Merritt encouraged the graduates to revisit their progress on an annual basis — perhaps the anniversary of their graduation — to ensure they are fulfilling their dreams. “Ask yourself: Have I worked with others this year to make the community a better place? Am I, in the words of Woody Hayes, ‘paying forward’ into the community?” Again, Merritt challenged: “What kind of citizens are you? What will be your distinctive mark on the world?”

Merritt lauded the class and its generation for the value it places on volunteerism and collective action; for its comfort with diversity; for its ability to re-invigorate citizenship with technology; and for not only surviving but thriving in a post-Sept. 11 world.

She concluded with a story about Sen. John Glenn, chair of the institute’s Board of Directors, who, 63 years later, still talks about the defining role Pearl Harbor played in his life and the lives of his contemporaries, shaping their views of citizenship and community.

“Pearl Harbor produced the citizens we call the ‘Greatest Generation’; citizens who showed valor, bravery and common purpose,” Merritt said. “They returned from battle to preside over an era of peace, prosperity and rapidly expanding civil rights. They integrated our schools, appointed the first woman to the Supreme Court and took us to the moon — achievements that seemed unattainable in 1941, when the Greatest Generation went off to war.

“Sept. 11 will play a similar role for you, and today we can hardly imagine your ultimate victories. The world will change greatly in the next 60 years, just as it did in the last, but your achievements, I predict, will be the greatest yet.”

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