If anything could be called a “whirlwind” visit, it was Donna Shalala's day at Union.
From her arrival on campus at noon until her departure at 3:30 p.m., the dynamic secretary of health and human services discussed dozens of issues with hundreds of students and faculty members while managing to squeeze in a number of interviews with the press locally and, by phone, nationally.
Shalala's visit came the day after President Clinton's State of the Union address. She and other members of the cabinet fanned out across the country to “amplify” Clinton's message. Her trip originated at a White House dinner last fall, when President Hull invited her to come to campus. “I had Roger on one side of me and Anne (Dyson) on the other,” she said at her talk. “I really couldn't say no,” she said, laughing.
She began with a luncheon attended with about eighty premed students and students from American politics courses taught by Professors Jim Underwood and Terry Weiner. Keeping her formal remarks brief, she highlighted the main points of Clinton's address and spent the rest of the time answering students' questions. Her background and skills as a former college professor and administrator came shining through as she talked easily and openly.
She asked if students noticed that she was the only cabinet member not at the State of the Union address. As students nodded their heads, she explained
that she was called by President Clinton a few days before the address and asked to be the “designated hitter.”
A Secret Service precaution, the “designated hitter” is a cabinet member in line for the presidency who is asked to sit out from the address in case the Capitol Building is bombed. Twelfth in line for the presidency, she watched the address from the White House, just a few feet
from the Oval Office. “I walked by and peeked in every couple of minutes,” she said.
She reiterated Clinton's message of finding common ground between the Democratic administration and the
Republican-controlled Congress. “We need to get them to the table and make those checks and balances work,” she said.
Students raised questions about topics such as welfare reform. “The current welfare system should be changed,” Shalala said. “Welfare should be transitional. Recipients should be moving from welfare to work as quickly as possible.”
“But for that to be accomplished,” she continued, “there has to be child support enforcement, training, health care, and child care available to people.” She added that President Clinton often invites welfare recipients to his office to talk with him.
Shalala said that President Clinton didn't fit into any real labels, like liberal or conservative. “He is in the center. He was born in the center. He thinks in the center,” she explained.
Shalala stayed after the lunch to speak with students and answer questions before moving to the Nott Memorial, where she was greeted by about 500 faculty, staff, students, and community members as well as reporters, television cameras, and photographers.
Again, she stressed the need to find common ground and bipartisanship and added some thoughts about college education. “I went to a college similar to Union, and I strongly believe in the smaller institutions. And you are all at one of the best,” she said.
She addressed the much larger audience with the same ease and openness as she did at the lunch, walking around and often standing face-to-face with audience members as they asked questions. Issues raised included the president's tax plan, welfare being dehumanizing, uniforms in public schools, child support, and the economic situation for college graduates.
When asked about advice for young people considering a career in public service, Shalala quipped, “Think about medical school.” As the audience broke into laughter, she added that
students should think about public service, even with cutbacks, because changing ideas about the relationship between the private and the public sector make this an exciting time.
Responding to a question about inequalities, she said that it was the most important question she had heard in months. It is, she said, the issue of “basic opportunity. Should justice depend on geography? Is the kind of opportunity you have going to be determined by what state you happen to be born in and what family you happen to be born into?”
She said that a strong national government is still needed to set standards to even out these differences. “Being American means something,” she said.
At the end of the session, Shalala accepted a small gift-a glass box with an image of the Nott Memorial-from President Hull as a thank you. She stayed once again to chat with students and answer more questions before leaving on a 4 p.m. flight back to Washington, D.C. Both before and after her sessions with students, she talked with television, radio, and newspaper reporters.
Her agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, is responsible for the major health, welfare, food and drug safety, medical research, and income security programs serving the American people. Before her current appointment, she served as chancellor of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, the first woman to head a Big Ten university. Previously, she was the youngest woman to lead a major U.S. college when she became president of Hunter College in New York in 1980.