Public Health has the ambitious aspiration of ensuring people's health and well-being. A huge job, no doubt, but the School is producing more people educated and trained to share the task.

Last academic year, students at the School earned 356 degrees, an all-time high and over 100 more degrees than just ten years ago. The graduates include one master of occupational health, six doctors of public health, 53 doctors of science, 122 masters of science, and 175 masters of public health. As has been the case for several years, women significantly outnumbered men, by 207 to 149, or 57 percent. The average age of the graduates was 33, a reflection, in part, of public health training often being a mid-career step.

The theme of the June 4 commencement ceremony was sexual and reproductive rights. Acting Dean James Ware told the audience that population, reproductive health, and child health were at the core of public health. "We can make it safer for the women who wish to have children; we can make alternatives possible for the women who do not," he told the crowds of happy soon-to-be graduates and their families and friends. Ware also led the audience of students, faculty, friends, and family in a moment of silence for Frank Minore, an M.P.H. student who died on March 18. An investigation by the Massachusetts State Medical Examiner's Office determined that Minore died of opiate intoxication.

In her commencement address, Ingar Brueggemann, secretary general of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), told the crowd that the School and the graduates were to be congratulated not only for earning their degrees, but also for inviting her to speak on the often taboo subject of sexual and reproductive rights. She forewarned the windswept audience that "I have to speak about tough things, negative things," before giving a speech laced with chilling statistics of the toll exacted by sexual and reproductive rights abuses. She included accounts of her personal encounters with women and children in awful circumstances. Brueggemann described looking into the eyes of a 12-year-old girl cradling her baby. While there was nothing physically wrong the young mother's sight, Brueggemann said she felt the girl's eyes "had turned blind."

"That little life had been stunted, perhaps not through lack of nutrition, but through lack of education, through lack of caring."

Brueggemann said IPPF wants sexual and reproductive rights to be recognized as "part and parcel" of human rights. She urged the graduates to work to bridge the gap between these rights and the starker, day-to-day reality of many people's lives, especially those of women and children.

The main student speaker, 1998 Class President William Faidi, told his fellow graduates not to look for "quick-fix solutions" to public health problems. He said there was "no panacea, no wizardry that can work out the issues. No, these problems-and the social, political, economic, and ethical challenges that they can cloak-only can be seized through diligence, through pioneerism."

Despite the sober speeches, Dean Ware and others noted that this year's graduates seemed especially exuberant during the commencement ceremony. Ricardo Chico Custodio, from Hawaii, accepted his degree wreathed in a crimson-colored lei. The two dozen health policy and management masters of science graduates whooped in unison when it came time to get their degrees.When M.P.H. graduate Edward B. Feinberg's name was read, there was a loud cry of celebration-and perhaps a little relief. Feinberg was the last one in his family to go through commencement that week. His wife, Ruth, graduated from Boston University; his son, Daniel, from Brandeis University; and his daughter, Rebecca, from Sterne College for Women, which is part of Yeshiva University in New York. Freshly minted M.P.H. Henrik Sandbu, of Norway, seemed to capture the mood of the day when he bear hugged a classmate and said, laughing, "We made it!"

Joan Altekruse, M.P.H.'65, president-elect of the Alumni Council, urged the students to join and be active in the School's Alumni Association. Dean Ware closed with the declaration that "the world will be a better place because you are in it. I say that from the heart" and then added, smiling broadly, "In deference to our speaker today, multiply--but in moderation!"

- Peter Wehrwein