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REMARKS BY:  DONNA E. SHALALA, SECRETARY OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
PLACE:       AMERICAN COUNCIL ON EDUCATION 80TH ANNUAL NATIONAL CONVENTION, SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA 
DATE:	     February 9, 1998

As I was preparing for today's conference, I recalled a story about the well known educator and author, William Lyon Phelps. While teaching at Yale, Phelps once gave an examination in English literature just before Christmas break. He asked his students to discuss poet Gerard Manley Hopkin's "sprung rhythm" technique. One young scholar handed in a very short paper, reading "Only God knows the answer to this question. Merry Christmas." Phelps returned the paper after Christmas vacation with the note: "Happy New Year. God gets an A-you get an F."

I'm sure Phelps would agree that being prepared is the key to success in college. But as we enter the new millennium, success in college is the key to being prepared for life. Because in this information age of the 21st century, a higher education will open the doors of opportunity, prosperity and possibility. As the President noted in his State of the Union Address, "The Information age is, first and foremost, an education age." But how do we ensure that every child someday will have the opportunity to walk through those doors? How do we ensure they'll succeed once inside the hallowed halls? And how do we ensure that every individual gets the most from their college experience? I believe that there's only one answer to all of these questions: College prep must begin in the cradle. And it demands a "seamless system" that will propel our children-all of our children-from the nursery to grade school, through high school and into post-secondary education. How we achieve that seamless system is what I want to discuss today. And I'm happy to do so with so many former colleagues-because, as I'll mention in a moment, you have key roles to play.

Whenever I visit a day care center today and see boys and girls learning and growing, I see more than a new generation. I see the children of the millennium. Children who will grow to define America's greatness in the next century. And children who are counting on us to give them the care ... and the tools ... and the chance to get the education and experience they'll need to be great. But how do we do this? First, we know that we must develop their minds and ensure their health.

It starts with quality child care. That's why President Clinton has proposed his Child Care Initiative. It's the largest single, investment in child care in our nation's history: 20 billion dollars over five years. It also significantly increases after school care, because it includes an 800 million dollar initiative for schools and communities to team up to provide after-school programs for half a million school-age children. With your wealth of knowledge and creativity, nobody is better qualified to help your communities establish good programs that nurture children while their parents are at work-or in class.

Of course, million of parents who worry about after school care have an additional concern if their children get sick-because they have no health insurance. Our goal is to ensure that every child in America has quality health insurance. That's why, last year, we created the Children's Health Insurance Program-or CHIP. With an unprecedented 24 billion dollar commitment, CHIP represents the first down payment we've made to make that goal a reality-and to improve the health of all our children.

Our second down payment on children's health is the President's 21st Century Research Fund. It is an historic national effort to spur the best minds of this generation to unlock new scientific discoveries, medical treatments and health strategies and to attract and train the best minds of the next generation to science. Today, the pace of medical discovery is limited not by science, imagination or intellect, but mostly by resources. So the research fund provides a 1.1 billion budget increase for the National Institutes of Health next year, part of an historic, 50 percent expansion over the next five years. It will steady the stream of research money, and initially fund nearly a third of all research grant proposals to reinvigorate our War on Cancer and expand our assault on other diseases. So that someday, if the children of the millennium want to read about cancer, AIDS or diabetes, they'll have to open the history books not the newspaper.

Of course, no matter how well we ensure their health, the children of the millennium can't take the first steps down the road to college without good schools. That's why, the President has proposed the first-ever national effort to reduce class size in the early years, by hiring 100,000 new teachers who have passed a state competency test. With these new teachers, class size in the first, second and third grades can be reduced to an average 18 students per room-down from an average of slightly over 25 students in self-contained classrooms today. 18 students-imagine how much more a teacher can teach.

But more teachers with fewer students requires more classrooms. So the President has also asked for a school construction tax cut to help communities modernize or build 5,000 schools.

But even when young people are ready to enter college, we have to ensure that the price of admission doesn't slam the door in their faces. This administration has fought to keep the door open with robust college financial aid. And over the past year, look at what we've accomplished: 220,000 new Pell Grants for deserving student tax-free education IRAs. And student loans that are already less expensive and easier to repay-where you can now deduct the interest. For the first two years of college, families can now get a $1,500 tax cut-a Hope Scholarship that will cover the cost of most community college tuition. And for junior and senior year, graduate school and job training, there's a lifetime learning grant. These are important steps forward-but they are steps to build on, no to rest on. This year, the President's budget includes seven point six billion for Pell Grant programs-an increase of 249 million. It increases Work-Study by 70 million, which would allow the program to reach the President's goal of giving one million recipients the opportunity to work their way through college. And the HOPE Scholarship and Lifetime Learning Tax credits will provide an estimated six point seven billion dollars to help more that 12 million students and their families afford post-secondary education. Additionally, the President proposes to further reduce student borrowing costs by cutting student loan origination fees from four percent to three percent for all borrowers.

Of course, no matter what the age or financial circumstance, everyone who has the ability and the desire to attend college should have the opportunity. That includes parents who've made the transition from welfare to work, and colleges and universities have a role to play in extending this dream -- so I urge you to work with your states and local communities to make it possible. Education has always been an avenue to a better life, and we need to remove as many road blocks on that avenue as possible.

Of course a university is not a safe haven-shielding students from life's realities. In fact, three of our nation's biggest public health problems are also campus health problems. I'm talking about tobacco, drugs and alcohol. Helping our young people resist these behaviors is the three-part challenge I want to offer you today...and it's a challenge that we can't meet unless each and every one of us gets involved. Now I'm not asking colleges to be surrogate parents.

But just as Hillary Clinton says it takes a village to raise a child. It takes an academic village to prepare a student for life beyond commencement day. But as a former college professor and administrator myself, I know it's not a simple thing to reach -- let alone teach -- young people today. I've never met a teenager or college student who spent more than five minutes a year reading a public health brochure. But they do use the Internet; they do watch videos; they do look at magazines. That's why I put on a milk mustache. You may have seen the ads -- I can't seem to avoid them. I figured, anybody who doesn't mind wearing a cheese-head shouldn't mind wearing a milk mustache. But I did these ads to get out an important word on public health -- that teenagers need calcium now to avoid osteoporosis later in life. We're trying other creative strategies to deliver the public health message where public health is jeopardized. Such as smoking.

Our Monitoring the Future study showed that from 1996 to 1997 daily cigarette use among 12th graders, the very students who are standing on your thresholds, increased to 24.6 percent-its highest level since 1979. And the 1995 National College Health Risk Behavior Survey indicated that almost one-third of our college students are already smokers. Thanks to the courage of this President, the tobacco industry can no longer peddle its poison to our children. And our new budget gives the FDA a 100 million dollar increase to enlist store clerks and managers in our fight against tobacco sales to minors. But the industry is increasingly targeting college students, by holding promotions at bars that student frequent. By giving away free merchandise and by investing millions in advertising. We're fighting back, first, by fighting teen smoking.

So I'm pleased to announce at this Conference that our Centers for Disease Control are teaming up with the four-time Grammy Award-winning music group, Boyz II Men, to launch our 3rd annual "Teen Media Contest on Tobacco." Boyz II Men is challenging high school students in over 30,000 schools to write and produce creative messages for their fellow teens about the dangers of tobacco-messages that they'll really listen to. The contest package includes an "Ask Boyz II Men" sheet covering topics such as how smoking hurts peak performance. And teens will also have the opportunity to interview the group on an Internet chat line-which will be announced at a later date on the CDC web site. I urge all of you to join our fight against tobacco. I urge you to declare college sponsored events "smoke-free". And I urge you to ensure that students who want to quit can get the help they need.

Tobacco can kill you, eventually. But drugs can kill your future immediately. Unfortunately, the news about drug abuse among young adults is not good. Our 1996 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse showed that for those ages 18 to 25, the rate of past month illicit drug use increased from approximately 13 percent to over 15 and a half percent, from 1994 to 1996. That's why, under this President, we've undertaken a comprehensive program of law enforcement; intervention; prevention; treatment; research and public education about substance abuse. But we all have to be involved in the battle. Students need to know that drug use on campus will not be tolerated. And we all need to send constant and consistent messages that drugs are not the stuff of dreams, but the stuff of nightmares.

Of course, the number one risky behavior among college students is alcohol abuse. The great British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli once noted, "A university should be a place of light, of liberty-and of learning." Unfortunately, too many of our students go to college searching not for academic knowledge-but for alcoholic beverages. The most recent data from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism indicates that over 40 percent binge drink-which is 5 or more drinks in a row for males, and 4 or more for females. In the state of Virginia alone last year, five college students died in one month in incidents tied to alcohol.

The most recent victim-a 21 year old women-is thought to have been participating in a ritual called a "fourth-year fifth," where seniors drink a fifth of liquor before the last home football game. Her blood alcohol level was point two-seven-three times the legal limit in Virginia. There have been other alcohol-related deaths at MIT, Louisiana State, Fordham, the University of Massachusetts, Vanderbilt, Penn State and many other schools. And the problem isn't just acute alcohol poisoning.

A landmark 1993 Harvard University study found that frequent binge drinkers are 7 to 16 times more likely than non-binge drinkers to have missed class, engaged in unplanned or unprotected sex, gotten in trouble with campus police, damaged property or been injured.

And among non-binge drinking women, the study indicated that 26 percent had experienced an unwanted sexual advance due to another student's drinking.

We also know that alcohol abuse is frequently a factor in suicide, drowning and accidental deaths. And that it increase your chances for later health problems such as cancer, stroke or cirrhosis of the liver. Furthermore, a recent NIH study of over 27,000 current and former drinkers clearly demonstrated the link between first time alcohol use and later alcohol dependence. The rates of lifetime alcohol dependence declined from more than 40 percent for those who had started drinking at age 14 or younger-to roughly 10 percent among those who started drinking at ages 20 and older.

Amidst all of this news, two months ago our Department released the 1997 Monitoring the Future Survey, which measures substance abuse among 8th, 10th and 12th graders. It was sobering news. More 12th graders drank five or more drinks in a row at least once a week during a two-week period. While fewer seniors thought having five or more drinks once or twice each weekend was harmful. That means our message about the dangers of alcohol are still not getting through to thousands of older teens; teens who-even as we speak-may be packing their bags to come to your schools.

But how can we expect our young people to say "no" to binge drinking, when society, alumni-and especially advertising-are sending messages that say "yes?" I believe the time has come for schools to consider voluntary guidelines that say: No alcohol advertising on the premises of an intercollegiate athletic event. No bringing alcohol to the site of an event-and that includes everyone. No turning a blind eye to underage drinking at tailgate parties. And no alcohol sponsorship of intercollegiate sporting events. Let's finally send the message that sports and alcohol don't mix. That the focus of college life must be the classroom, not the bar room. And that it's time to plug the keg, cap the bottle, and turn off the tap. I know that this will have some impact on revenue. And I know that there has been resistance from colleges, alumni and the NCAA to these kind of tough guidelines in the past. But in the light of recent alcohol related deaths, and research suggesting that advertising may influence adolescents to be more favorably disposed to drinking, the time has come to seriously reconsider them.

In fact, we shouldn't stop with sporting events. The National Commission on Drug-Free Schools has called for a prohibition of all alcohol advertising in school stadiums, at school buildings and at school events. That would exclude the use of college logos or mascots by the alcohol industry; the co-sponsorship of Greek events by the alcohol industry; and industry sponsorship of school programs. This won't be easy. But we simply cannot continue the Faustian bargain of revenues and sponsorship in exchange for alcohol promotion-because it's our students who ultimately pay the price.

But breaking the connection between drinking and student life-especially sports-is only part of the solution to the problem of alcohol on campus. We also need to focus much more early detection, timely intervention and comprehensive prevention-which I know you'll be discussing at a session later today.

And we all need to get involved -- it takes the entire academic village. We need college officials to consistently enforce drinking regulations on campus and to provide students with sufficient recreational opportunities that don't include alcohol. We need faculty to take an interest in the well being of their students and to make more than minimal academic demands. We need pubs and liquor stores near colleges to enforce underage drinking laws and to discourage irresponsible drinking. And we need each and every one of us-parents, alumni, staff and coaches-to send consistent anti-drinking messages that will drown out the pro-use messages blaring from our society. This will certainly make for healthier students-and for more successful students.

I know that we've all heard the old saying that success isn't a destination, it's a journey-and I'm sure Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes would have agreed. Holmes once boarded a train at Washington's Union Station. But in the general commotion, he promptly lost his ticket. The conductor immediately recognized him and said, "Never mind, Mr. Justice. When you find your ticket, I'm certain you'll mail it in." "Mr. Conductor, Holmes replied, "the question isn't 'Where's my ticket?' but, 'Just where am I supposed to be going?"

I think that story proves that, during a journey, we must never lose sight of our final destination. And that's certainly true when it comes to the journey to college. For your institutions, the class of 2016 is being born today. And as the children of the millennium make their journey from the nursery room to the dorm room, we all must help along the way. After all, college has changed a lot since Mt. Holyoke required that its applicants be able to repeat the multiplication tables...kindle a fire...and mash potatoes. And we must ensure that our children are prepared for the challenges of the 21st century.

Because who knows what course these future students-who are only now beginning life's journey-may one day chart? They may discover new paths to better health they may map a new route to understanding the origins of the universe or they may blaze new trials in the global struggle for peace and equality.

But right now, their future is very much in our hands. If we want our future leaders to fulfill their promise, then we must continue to meet the challenges of smoking, drug abuse and drinking we must strive to find innovative ways to aid our future students on their journey and we must never give up on our young people. Thank you.