Le Lycee Francais de Los Angeles - Actualites Yearbook (Los Angeles, CA)

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Annual Commencement and Awards Ceremonies - June 9 and June 10, 1977 Welcoming Remarks Dr. Raymond Kabbaz President, Le Lycee Francais Address by the Honorary Chairman, Board of Trustees M. Michel Rougagnou Consul General of France Commencement Address (June 9th) M. Jean-Michel Cousteau Commencement Address (June 10th) Senator John Tunney The Lycee: New Beginnings Dr. Raymond Kabbaz Remarks Honorable M. John Ferraro Los Angeles City Councilman, 4th District Remarks Mr. Luther Marr Vice President, Lycee Board of Trustees Presentation of Honors and Awards Le Lycee Francais de Los Angeles Remarks by Valedictorians Debbie Katz (English) Camille Peterson (French) Le Lycee Francais de Los Angeles is pleased to honor both its graduating and continuing students this morning, as well as the many friends and parents of Le Lycee. Le Lycee is fully accredited by both the French Ministry of National Education and the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, Congratulations to the Class of ' T?! Ce programme est offert par le restaurant New Moon, 912 South San Pedro, Los Angeles - la cuisine Chinoise par excellence. Tin; wurn: hoisk V ■ASHINGTO ■ May 16, 1977 TO THE 19 77 GRADUATES OF LE LYCEE FRANCAIS DE LOS ANGELES Congratulations to each of you at this important milestone in your lives. I would like to thank you for your kind request for a Presidential message and encourage you to explore the many choices open to you. America needs your full involvement to meet the new challenges of an ever-changing era. My prayers and best wishes go with you for lives of happiness and fulfillment.

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Commencement 1977 THE WHITK HOI SE WASHINGTON May 16, 19 77 TO THE 19 77 GRADUATES OF LE LYCEE FRANCAIS DE LOS ANGELES Congratulations to each of you at this important milestone in your lives. I would like to thank you for your kind request for a Presidential message and encourage you to explore the many choices open to you. America needs your full involvement to meet the new challenges of an ever-changing era. My prayers and best wishes go with you for lives of happiness and fulfillment.

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Discours d ' usage a 1 ' occasion de la distribution solennelle des prix Juin 1977 There is a custom in graduation speeches to exhort graduation classes to continue their education, to strive for success in a world that is highly competitive. You will forgive me if I break tradition a second time and not only not speak in French, but also avoid the typical outlining of a career which, if pursued, will lead to health, wealth and happiness. Instead of telling you what you ought to do to get advanced education or find a job, I would like to offer some reflections on what is going on around us and how I react to it. For the last three years, public opinion polls have been telling us that people think things were better in the past than they are now and that things are better now than they will be in the future. This pessimism is not surprising. In the last decade, we have had Viet-Nam and Watergate. We have had inflation and high unemployment. We have become conscious that we are running out of oil and natural gas and we wonder if we will find substitutes which will enable us to keep our standard of living. We have found that the wastes from nuclear plants cannot be 100 percent safely stored and in fact, could be used by international outlaws to make atomic bombs. We have seen the health of the world ' s population threatened by the pollution of the rivers, the sea, the air and our foods. We have witnessed war and revolution in the Middle East, South Africa and Asia. Americans have lost their innocence and some of their confidence and they don ' t like it. Political, social and economic institutions are under attack. It used to be that doctors and lawyers were highly respected — now less than a majority of people have esteem for these professionals. Congressmen weigh in with 12 percent popular approval — just above used car salesmen. In some quarters, the free enterprise system is scorned as a means of economic exploitation and profit is equated with rip off. Even the institution of parenthood is under attack, although I somehow have a feeling this is one institution that will survive. Amongst many young people today, there is a coolness and detachment which covers up rage and insecurity. Numbers is one way to avoid the consequences of emotion. Another is to perform and not to feel — to acquire sensory experiences without emotional involvement. The lack of emotional commitment has many manifestations. In friendship and romance, it can be the covering up of feelings — an attitude that life is controlled by the invisible hand of fate. It really doesn ' t make any difference what one does in life as long as one protects oneself from getting hurt. Therefore, never let your friend or your loved one get too close — protect yourself from being ravaged. Avoid the ego wounds of a highly competitive culture by taking drugs or drinking or side-stepping work in school or out. If you never give yourself emotionally to another person, or if the things you do in life have no emotional attachment, you are free, spaced out, above it all. Kurt N ' onnegut, Jr. mirrors this detachment so prevalent in our culture in his books. In SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE, Billy Pilgrim is the innocent hero who says. The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies, he only appears to die . . . when a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in that particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is So it goes. At another point in the same book, V ' onnegut writes, Some days we Tralfamadorians have wars as horrible as any you have seen or read about. There isn ' t anything we can do about them, so we simply don ' t look at them. We ignore them. We spend eternity looking at pleasant moments — like today at the zoo. Isn ' t this a nice moment. The unwillingness that so many people in our society have to confront their emotions — to love, and to hate, to laugh and to cry, to face reality — has led to a thirst for sensation as an antidote to pleasurelessness and deadness. Experience for the sake of experience is the gospel for these persons. The means of getting the sensation varies. It can c? a car, a motorcycle, a bottle of booze, drugs, sex, T.V ' ., or whatever. Reality becomes fantasy and fantasy is the only ' .-. ' iiity I SIP not saying that experience is equal to deadness. The point that I am trying to make is that when the sensation .-■ trie exDenence is an escape from genuine emotion, it represents an unwillingness to make a real commitment to • cr ideal.