Award-winning journalist Garrick Utley has been chosen to deliver the commencement speech to the class of 2001. Utley was a reporter for over 30 years, covering events ranging from presidential elections to the Vietnam War. He now serves as a Senior editor at CNN. Casey Trupin, a 1994 Pomona College graduate and the recipient of the Equal Justice Fellowship, will be this year’s Class Day Speaker.

The son of reporters, Utley’s life revolved around journalism and politics from an early age. He received his BA in Political Science from Carleton College, an undergraduate experience that instigated not just his foray into politics, but also his ties to Pomona College. Pomona President Peter Stanley was formerly a dean at Carleton. Stanley said of Utley: "[He] and I have known each other for about twenty years. He is a graduate of Carleton College, and was a trustee when I was dean there."

Courtesy of NBC News Utley will speak at graduation.

As Senior Class President Lauren Shawn discovered, locating speakers is "a matter of connections." Thus, when Utley "expressed real enthusiasm for speaking here" to Stanley, Shawn was "really excited" to secure him as a speaker. Shawn, along with a self-selected committee consisting of seniors Annie Shahinian, Katie Giles, Dionna Brown, Kathryn Smith, Nathanael Johnson, Quyen Luc, Rebecca Fineman, Sarah Jackel, and Tim Taylor elected this year’s commencement speaker.

President Stanley notes that Utley "has seen the world from the unusual perspective of being both NBC’s and ABC’s chief foreign correspondent, host of Meet the Press, and now senior editor at CNN." Utley began his career at NBC in 1963, and throughout his thirty years with the agency, reported from 70 countries and garnered numerous accolades. His achievements include the prestigious Overseas Press Club’s Edward R. Murrow Award for his reports on Soviet-American relations, as well as the George Foster Peabody Award for a documentary detailing the aftermath of the Vietnam War.

Recently, Utley published You Should Have Been Here Yesterday: A Life Story In Television News, a work that examines the impact of the television medium on journalism’s evolution. An excerpt from his book recalls both his undergraduate commencement experience and the beginning of his journalism career:

"On a sunny June morning in 1961, the president of Carleton College, in Northfield, Minnesota (a town that had succeeded magnificently in living up to its motto, Cows, Colleges and Contentment), shook my hand and handed me a diploma, which I took to mean that I was now a certified adult. I had spent four years absorbing a liberal arts education and working on the campus radio station as a newscaster and ultimately the news director."

How Utley’s own liberal arts background will reflect in his speech is yet to be known, but Shawn comments that "he is a neat, reflective, experienced person." Utley will receive an honorary Pomona College degree as part of his commencement speech, which Stanley translates into "an exchange of honors."

Casey Trupin, a former ASPC President, graduated from Pomona in 1994 and has since worked extensively in the field of youth rights. He served as the Director, and one of the original founders, of Street Youth Legal Advocates of Washington (SYLAW). Their mission, according to the SYLAW website, is to provide "the missing component… of legal assistance" to Seattle’s "large population of homeless and at-risk youth." Specifically, SYLAW seeks to help "street youth face a variety of legal problems, including family issues, educational problems, and mental health issues." Meeting these needs are crucial, SYLAW asserts, for youth to leave their life on the streets for one of stability. Trupin is continuing his fight on behalf of troubled adolescents through his current work as a Youth Law Attorney for Colombia Legal Services.

Trupin’s inspiration to work with at-risk youth arose through experience in Guatemala, where he saw firsthand the unique and often overwhelming problems adolescents face in legal interactions. As a law student at the University of Washington, Trupin and several other concerned law students united to form SYLAW in order to help the street youth of Seattle. Their organization received a boost when Trupin was awarded the Equal Justice Fellowship from the National Association for Public Interest Law. This Fellowship provides for two years of grant money, which enabled SYLAW to expand and improve its services toward a difficult-to-reach demographic. His intensive efforts to aid youth resulted in his selection as the Pomona College Inspirational Young Alumni Award for the year 2000.

Shawn noted that it’s "nice [that Class-Day Speaker] can be someone tied with the school, but not necessarily a faculty member." Trupin, as a former student, is an unusual choice for Class Day Speaker, but one that Shawn welcomes. She comments that he has "done amazing community service" and she is enthused to see what he will bring to our graduation ceremony. Commencement will be held Sunday, May 13.