President Kennedy’s Call to Vanderbilt Students

Gracie Smith
Co-President, Vanderbilt Political Review
Class of 2011
College of Arts and Science

Forty-seven years ago this May, President John F. Kennedy delivered an address at Vanderbilt University to celebrate the school’s ninetieth anniversary. During his speech, President Kennedy said, “I urge all of you today, especially those who are students, to act—to enter the lists of public service and rightly win (or lose) the prize.” Even though 1963 was not an election year, President Kennedy’s asked Vanderbilt students to transform academic ideas into action for public service, whether it was as “a precinct worker or a president.”
The words that President Kennedy spoke on this campus in 1963 still hold true today. Even while he delivered his speech to an audience in the Deep South during a time of racial discrimination and gross inequity, President Kennedy maintained that “the natural aristocracy of character and talent” could overcome barriers. President Kennedy was dedicated to the idea that students have the power to improve society when they take the initiative to be civil leaders. In fact, almost three years earlier, the sit-in movement had already proven the substance of his speech to be true. After college students from Fisk University, Tennessee A&I State University, Meharry Medical College, and American Baptist Theological Seminary led the Nashville sit-ins in 1960, institutional segregation began to crumble, and the Civil Rights Act passed four years later in 1964. Even though demons of prejudice continue to haunt our society, the community-driven leadership of college students half a century ago is directly responsible for the progress our society has made. If these students had decided to stand aside instead of becoming involved in changing the world, it is disquieting to imagine how the world we live in today might be different from inaction.
Unfortunately, many young Americans became discouraged by the onslaught of negative campaigns and personal attacks from both sides of the political aisle during the recent midterm election. Many college-age voters who cast their ballots for the first time in 2008 failed to reappear at the voting booth in 2010. At the same time, students across the nation marveled at the emotional fervor of the Tea Party reported in the media, and enjoyed keeping up with the latest ridiculous comments made by various candidates on the campaign trail. It seems that the college-age electorate was caught somewhere between jaded apathy and concerned amusement, with many voting for whom they saw as the least bad of two bad candidates, if they voted at all. Today’s college students are understandably disillusioned by polarized politics, a strained health care system, the largest federal debt in history, and two seemingly endless wars.
However, we must remember what students in Nashville were able to accomplish 50 years ago in the face of incredible opposition. Vanderbilt students must also remember that one of the most influential presidents in our nation’s history directly called this student body into public service. The noble ideals that defined Vanderbilt as an institution of learning and service then do so even more today. The future of the nation’s policies may seem discouraging, but if we as individual students do not rally around the issues most affecting us and take up the fight now, who will?
Some college students cast their votes this November, and others decided not to vote at all. Either way, all students now have the opportunity to make a lasting impact each day, whether or not it is Election Day, through direct service to their communities. For those students who are disenchanted with the political system, now is the chance to rise above the partisan schism and come together in public service. While voting is an important duty and right of American citizens, it is not the only duty we as citizens are called to. I encourage college-age voters to not wait for 2012 to get involved in the political process again, but to get involved in actively making the world a better place through service to the community. Let’s answer President Kennedy’s call forty-seven years later with a resounding yes.

You can read President Kennedy’s 1963 address to Vanderbilt here: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/jfkvanderbiltconvocation.htm