Good morning. I am particularly pleased to be here in my beloved island of Puerto Rico to celebrate your graduation from the Colegio Universitario del Este. I want to extend my congratulations to each and every graduate and their families. You have come a long way and you should be proud.

Bill Cosby, the comedian, has a new book out about graduating from college. It's called "Congratulations! Now What?" I think he asks the right question. I want to share with you today my views about how the question might be answered. Some of you may already have your future mapped out – you may have a good job lined up, you may be continuing your studies. But for those of you who are searching for the answer to "Now what?", I urge you to consider public service. At his inaugural address thirty-eight years ago, President John F. Kennedy said "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." These words ring true today.

This is a plea for public service and volunteerism. Service to your community. Service to Puerto Rico. Service to the United States. The point is to give something back to your community. To help those not as fortunate as ourselves. To find a cause and become its champion.

I learned about the importance of public service from my grandfather, the late U.S. Senator Dennis Chavez. My grandfather represented the people of the State of New Mexico in the U.S. Congress for over thirty-two years. He was a great friend of the poor and the less fortunate, a man about whom a fellow Senator once said "He walked among the mighty but never forgot his origins among the humble." How many of us will be lucky enough to have such things said about us.

I was very young when he died and I must admit I didn’t understand what public service or being a public servant meant. I do remember once when my older brothers and I were visiting him in Washington, D.C. during a particularly hot and humid summer – as hot as it ever gets here in Puerto Rico. Outside my grandfather’s home a policeman was directing traffic in the sweltering heat. My grandfather got up from the table, grabbed the lemonade pitcher and a glass and went out the door. We looked out the window to see where he was going. There he was, pouring a glass of lemonade for the policeman. When he came back in, my brother, Jorge, said, "now I understand what it is to be a public servant!"

Now, I know a lot of commencement addresses focus on you, the graduates. They tell you to "follow your dreams" or to "be the best you can be." This is not one of those speeches. This speech is about sacrifice, about serving others and about fighting for principles that allow us to transcend ourselves. Let me give you another example that has guided me. My grandfather was quite ill and in the hospital on July 17, 1962 as the U.S. Senate was about to take a critical vote on the future of Medicare. But, even though he had his own health problems to worry about, he got up out of his hospital bed and went to the Senate chamber to cast his vote. He thought it was more important to worry about the health problems of others than his own.

Now, I'm not asking for nearly that level of sacrifice. I'm just asking that you think about spending a couple of years doing something in the public sphere. Join the Peace Corps. Teach. Serve on the staff of an elected official. Become a public defender. Now is the time, believe me. Most of you aren't married, and most of you don't have children. When that changes -- and it will very soon -- going into public service will become much more complicated. You may never have this opportunity again. I urge you to take it.

I know what some of you are thinking: "I've got loans to pay off. I've got to go where I can make good money now. That public service stuff sounds nice, but it won't pay the bills." I understand the financial pressure to go into the private sector. And many of you will understandably decide that you just can't afford public service. But it can be done. It might take you a few more years to pay back your loans, but I guarantee that you will not starve.

Moreover, a couple of years in public service is a great investment. In public service, you'll be exposed to things and be given responsibilities that you probably won't get in the private sector. Eventually, public service can even pay off monetarily. Employers know, for instance, that men and women coming out of the armed services are terrific employees -- often more mature, more organized and more team-oriented than their contemporaries.

If you are willing to think about public service, let me suggest one issue that could use your time and your talent -- the culture of violence in our society. All of you know about the tragic school shootings in Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. But there are hundreds of school-age children being killed or victims of violence every day in the United States. Not as well known as the shootings at Columbine, but for the families involved, every bit as tragic. One sad reality is that all of the violence we're surrounded by has desensitized us, dulled us, made us think that violence is normal. When and if murders in our community no longer qualify as "news," I fear for our future.

Puerto Ricans know the pain of violence better than most. The murder rate in Puerto Rico is still tragically high -- over 700 killings in 1997 alone.

What can be done? And how do you become a part of the solution? There are lots of possibilities, depending on your interests.

First, there is the problem of guns. There are simply too many guns in the United States and guns are too easy to come by. After the tragedy in Littleton I asked my daughter, who is eighteen and out of high school, how difficult it would be for a student to get a gun in her high school in Maryland. To my dismay, she replied "maybe ten minutes." Unfortunately, it’s probably as easy to get a gun in any high school in the U.S. I'm pleased that the United States Congress is finally beginning to listen to the American people on this subject. Enough is enough.

Second, and a particular problem here in Puerto Rico, is the problem of drugs. I don't need to tell you about the connection between drugs and violence. You hear about it or see it every day.

If you're interested in stemming the epidemic of guns or drugs, there are lots of ways to get involved. You could work for a public awareness group. You could work for health clinics. You could work enforcing the laws as an officer or as a prosecutor. You could work for projects that encourage turning in illegal guns to law enforcement authorities. Just recently in San Diego, California, several radio stations offered free Padres baseball tickets to those who turned in guns. Among the guns turned in were semi-automatic pistols and sawed-off shotguns. Other successful turn-in projects offered concert tickets, snazzy sneakers, cash or shopping sprees. You see, there are infinite ways to get involved.

Finally, since I am a Commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission, I want to discuss the problem of gratuitous violence in our media. Let's start with TV. There isn't any doubt that TV has a huge impact on our lives. 98% of our homes have a TV set -- more than the percentage of homes that have a telephone. The average child watches about 25 hours of television a week -- more time each year watching TV than he or she spends in the classroom.

And, much of what kids are watching on TV is violent. By the time they complete elementary school, children have witnessed about 8,000 murders and 100,000 acts of violence. And while prime time TV contains about 5 violent acts per hour -- bad enough -- there are over 20 violent acts per hour on children's programming. Each week, television programming contains about 800 violent scenes that qualify as high risk for younger children.

But there is some hope on the horizon. It's called the V-chip. After years of political wrangling and technical development, the V-chip is about to become a reality. For those of you who may not know, the V-chip is a device that will be installed in TV sets that will permit parents to block shows that they do not want their children to see.

The V-chip is not a substitute for parents. It is a tool for parents. Parents cannot always monitor what their children watch on TV. Nowadays there aren't just three channels to monitor, with cable there are dozens. No parent can possibly know what's on all of them all of the time. And in this age of single parent families and families in which both parents must work to make ends meet, it isn't possible for parents to always be at home to monitor their children's television viewing. The V-chip will allow parents to block violent, sexual or other programming that they believe is harmful to their children. When the parents leave for work, or go out for the evening and leave the children with a babysitter, they will be able to punch a couple of buttons and the V-chip will block out programming that they do not wish their children to see.

How will the V-chip permit parents to block shows? Well, along with requiring V-chip blocking technology in new sets, the U.S. Congress also required that program ratings be developed, so that the V-chip would be able to tell what kind of programming was being shown. The ratings will be sent by the TV station or cable operator over what's called the "vertical blanking interval." I'm sure all of you know the horizontal line on your sets that sometimes needs to be adjusted. That's not just there to annoy you. That line can carry a lot of valuable information, like closed captioning for the hearing impaired. It will also carry the TV ratings. The V-chip will be able to read those signals and will block the show if it has been programmed to do so.

This system is finally about to become a reality. By July 1, half of all TVs sold in the U.S. must have V-chips installed; by January 1, 2000, all sets must have V-chips. I'm pleased that parents are about to have this new tool at their disposal. And I'm honored that the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission has asked me to head a task force to make sure that the roll-out of the V-chip is a success. I'll be working hard over the coming months to ensure that the V-chips are in the sets, that the ratings are being sent, and that parents are educated about the system.

The V-chip is not a cure-all. By itself, it's not going to prevent another Littleton or save the hundreds of children who are murdered or who are the victims of violence each year. But while it's not the whole answer, it might be a part of the answer -- at least for some families.

Unfortunately, TV is not the only problem. There are violent video games, especially first-person killing games like Doom, that desensitize children to the realities of violence. And now we're facing a powerful new medium called the Internet that permits anyone with a computer to download instructions on subjects like bomb-making with the click of a button.

Under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution guaranteeing freedom of speech, there's less that the government can do about the threat posed by computer games and the Internet, but let me just note a few ideas that others have put forward that are worth considering.

First, it would be helpful if there were amore commonality among ratings systems. Right now, there are ratings systems for TV, movies, video games and the Internet, but they're all somewhat different. More commonality would make ratings simpler and easier to use for parents.

Second, ultra-violent material that is designed for adults should not be marketed to children. It is unconscionable for producers of this material to claim that they are simply protecting the rights of adults to have access to this material, and then market it to children. As Senator Joe Lieberman said: "Joe Camel has not gone away. He seems far too often to have gone into the entertainment business." I applaud President Bill Clinton’s announcement last week that the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission will conduct a joint study on whether the entertainment industry is using violence to market movies, music and video games to our children.

Third, the industries involved should enforce their age restrictions. A child under 17 should not be allowed into an "R" rated movie without an adult. A child under 17 should not be allowed to buy or rent an "R" rated movie. A child should not be allowed to buy or rent an adult-rated video game.

Fourth, we must speak out individually and as a society, and make content-producers think twice before they put gratuitous violence in their products. This may be the most important of all, because of the difficulty in our society of keeping objectionable material from our children. Just think about what the AIDS crisis has done to the amount of depictions of casual, unprotected sex in our entertainment. Content producers have acted more responsibly and now they think twice before depictions of gratuitous sex scenes. The same goes for depictions of smoking. These kind of social pressures work. And nobody has argued that the First Amendment has been destroyed because of it.

In closing, I want to thank you again for inviting me to be your commencement speaker. This is a wonderful moment for you and I am honored to share it with you. I do hope that some of you will find your way to public service. If stemming violence is not your issue, fine. Do something else. If you can’t go into public service full-time, volunteer. Be a mentor to a teenager. There are hundreds of ways to give of yourself and give to the community. There are hundreds of issues out there that need the attention of energetic young minds like yours. You can choose to help and you can make a difference – but only you can seize the moment. As the great poet, Antonio Machado, said:

Caminante, son tus huellas
el camino y nada más;
caminante, no hay camino,
se hace camino al andar.
Al andar se hace camino,
y al volver la vista atrás
se ve la senda que nunca
se ha de volver a pisar.
Caminante, no hay camino,
sino estelas en la mar.