    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book I)]
    [May 17, 1996]
    [Pages 764-767]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at Webster Groves High School in Webster Groves, Missouri
    May 17, 1996

        Thank you very much. Let me say, first, thank you for this very warm
    welcome. Congressman Gephardt and Mrs. Gephardt and I were talking on
    the way in--it may be too hot for you, but we have just been through the
    bitterest winter we can remember in Washington, DC, and it's very
    comfortable for me. I'll never complain about the heat again. We're
    delighted to be here.
        Mayor Williams; Superintendent Gussner; your principal, Patricia
    Voss; the police chief, Gene Young; let me thank all of you. Let me
    thank Mr. Johnson and the Jazz Ensemble One for playing here. I used to
    play in a group like that, and I liked every day of it. I want to thank
    Mrs. Genovese and the students who did all the banners and the signs.
    They're just terrific. Thank you.
        I came down here with a lot of people today, but one of the staff
    members that I brought, someone who works for our Secretary of Labor,
    Bob Reich, is an alumni of Webster Groves, Catherine Jayne. She came
    down here with me, and I wanted to mention that, just so you'll know
    your influence is being felt in Washington.
        And I want to say a special word of thanks to the young lady who
    introduced me, Jocelyn Grant. She did a good job, didn't she? Give her
    another hand. [Applause] I know something of her activities, and I want
    to thank her not only for the introduction, but for being a very good
    model of what good citizenship and personal responsibility can mean in a
    school and a community.
        I came here with Congressman Gephardt today to Webster Groves to
    talk to you about one of the greatest challenges we face as a Nation,
    the rising tide of violence among our young people. I'm here because
    this community has worked together to reduce that tide of violence and
    because we have to work together as a country if we expect your future
    to be what it ought to be.
        You will live most of your lives in the 21st century. It will be an
    age of unparalleled possibility, the possibility to do things for a
    living that are more various and more exciting than any generation of
    Americans has ever known, the possibility to bring this country together
    across the lines of race and income that divide us, the possibility to
    live in a world that is more peaceful and free and prosperous and secure
    than any the world has ever known.
        But all those are just possibilities, not guarantees. If you want
    that kind of country for your future, you'll have to work for it. We'll
    have to work to make sure that every American, without regard to their
    station in life, has a chance to live out their dreams. We'll have to
    work to bridge the differences that still divide too many of our people
    and make sure that we treat our diversity as a precious asset and that

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    we come together across racial and regional and gender and income lines.
    And we'll have to work for a world that is more peaceful.
        To achieve that, we'll have to meet a lot of challenges. The
    Congressman talked about one of them. We have to build stronger
    families. We have to build a world-class education for all of our
    people, which is why we've worked so hard for more affordable college
    loans and more scholarships and more work-study, so that every one of
    you gets out of here who wants to do it will have a chance to go to
    college and will never be deterred by the cost of a college education.
    We want that.
        We'll have to work to build a new form of family economic security
    in this dynamic economy. We'll have to give people now the opportunity
    for an entire lifetime to get more education, to have access to
    affordable health care, to have a pension that they'll need for old age
    that they can carry around with them even if they have to change jobs.
    We'll have to work to achieve that.
        We'll have to work to continue to grow our economy and preserve the
    environment. But if we don't preserve our natural environment, our clean
    air, our clean water, our resources, our wildlife, we'll never have the
    kind of future that America deserves. And I know young people of America
    are as committed to that as any group of our fellow citizens. We'll have
    to work to make the world a more peaceful place, more free of terrorism
    and international crime and drug running and weapons running. And we'll
    have to work to make sure that you have a Government that does its part.
    But none of this will matter if we can't fulfill our first
    responsibility as a society, and that is to preserve lawfulness and to
    minimize violence in our own homes and streets and neighborhoods and
    communities.
        You know, a lot of Americans are so numb to turning on the
    television news at night and seeing another report of another violent
    crime that they just take it for granted; they almost yawn. They say,
    ``Well, I can miss the first 5 minutes of the news, that will be the
    crime part.''
        Now, I know that we can never fully eliminate crime from our country
    because we can't totally transform human nature. But I'll tell you what
    we can do. We can go back to the time when people go home at night and
    they turn on the television news and they see a serious crime, when
    they're appalled, surprised, disgusted, and shocked, when it is the
    exception and not the rule. That's the kind of America I want again.
        We have worked very, very hard to give American communities the
    tools they need to bring down the crime rate. With the strong leadership
    of Dick Gephardt in 1994 we passed a sweeping crime bill that, among
    other things, will put another 100,000 police officers on the streets of
    America over a 5-year period. We're already at 43,000 and climbing.
        And these police officers are different. They're going back to
    community police work, not sitting behind a desk but walking a beat,
    working with the communities, reaching out to children, not only
    catching criminals but learning the neighborhood, so that they can stop
    crime from happening and give young people something to say yes to in
    their future. That is the kind of community police work we need in every
    community, in every neighborhood, on every street in the United States.
    And we are determined to achieve that.
        We have worked hard to deal with the problem of guns and violence.
    We passed the Brady bill after years of debate. We passed legislation
    banning 19 kinds of assault weapons. We passed legislation calling for
    zero tolerance for guns in the schools of this country.
        And you know, there was a lot of controversy about that legislation.
    I heard the awfulest din about it in 1994 you ever saw. But it's 1996
    now, and in Missouri and my native State of Arkansas, we have had every
    kind of hunting season you can possibly have and not a single hunter has
    lost his or her rifle. But I'll tell you what has happened: 60,000
    people with criminal histories, with mental health problems, and with
    other things that make them unfit to have handguns have been denied the
    right to get handguns because of the Brady bill. We did the right thing.
    We did the right thing.
        This is working. All across America the crime rate is dropping.
    We're in the 4th year in a row of a big drop in crime. In Webster Groves
    you're on your way to making this the lowest overall crime year in
    almost 20 years. Congratulations to you.
        But I have to tell you something, and that's the reason I'm here and
    we're in this hot gym on this warm day. [Laughter] If anybody had told
    me this 4 years ago, I would not have believed it. If anybody had told
    me the following fact when I was sworn in as President, that you will
    have 4 years of declining crime rates

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    in America, the murder rate will drop, the robbery rate will drop, the
    rate of rape and arson will drop all across America, but unbelievably,
    the rate of random violence by children under 18 will go up--if someone
    had told me that 3 years ago, I would not have believed it. But that is
    exactly what has happened.
        And so I'm telling you what we have to do is to solve that. We can't
    for long go on being a country where the crime rate keeps going up among
    young people under 18. We now have the largest group of children
    starting grade school that we have had since the baby boom generation.
    Within just a few years we'll have the largest number of young people in
    schools in America in the entire history of the country.
        We cannot stand to have higher juvenile crime rates and violence
    rates when that huge number of young people come here. We have got about
    5 years to do something about this problem, and we cannot do it unless
    the young people of America lead the way. It is your future, and you
    have to lead the way.
        We have done what we could. We passed a bill called the safe and
    drug-free schools act. It gives money to schools all across the country
    to do what they think they need to do. Here our program has helped
    station a plainclothed police officer at the school. Earlier this week,
    I saw that your State was moving to help when Missouri lawmakers agreed
    to a final version of a new school safety law. And I applaud the
    Governor and the legislature for doing that. People should be safe in
    school. If there's any place on Earth young people should be safe all
    day, every day, it is when they are in school. Every young person should
    be safe.
        All over America schools are asking for permission to try different
    things. I was in Long Beach, California, a couple of weeks ago--that's
    the third biggest school district in our biggest State--and they
    voluntarily decided to put in school uniforms in their elementary and
    junior high school. They let the students pick the uniforms and design
    them. They had a gang problem, and all of a sudden they realized that
    when their kids were in their own uniforms, nobody mistook them for gang
    members anymore. People stopped following them home from school. People
    stopped attacking them on the play yard. They were able to restore
    discipline, reduce crime, and increase learning.
        There are all kinds of things that are happening all across America.
    But without exception, we find that they are led by people in the
    community and especially by active, aggressive young people who say, ``I
    do not want my classmates to live a life of danger; I want us to be safe
    and secure.'' That's what we need for you to do today.
        Because dangerous gangs are spreading across America, we are working
    with Federal prosecutors everywhere to try to go after gangs that are
    seriously violent in the same way our country went after the mob decades
    ago. We cannot permit the spread of gangs to spread guns, to spread
    drugs, to spread violence all across the country to communities that
    don't have to face that today. We are working at that.
        We are working to help parents protect their children. Earlier
    today, before I came here, I signed a bill you may have heard something
    about; it's called Megan's Law. From now on, every State in the country
    will be required by law to tell a community when a dangerous sexual
    predator is in the community.
        So we are working on all this. But let me say one more time, the
    places where crime is down are the places where people are working with
    the police, the places where young people are taking the lead. I spoke
    at the graduation at Pennsylvania State University a few days ago, and I
    asked for a million more volunteers all across America--50 in the 20,000
    neighborhoods that have community police watches now--to help bring down
    the crime rate. So I ask you to do that.
        I want your future to be the brightest, best future any generation
    of Americans has ever known. I believe it can be. I know what the
    economy will present to those of you who have a good education and who
    are willing to work. I know what the incredible diversity of America
    means in a global society where any country would give anything to have
    the diverse resources of our various racial and ethnic groups, of people
    educated, committed to freedom, and committed to hard work and free
    enterprise. But I know, too, that unless we can purge ourselves of crime
    and violence and drugs and gangs, your future will never be what it
    ought to be.
        So I ask you to stand up, as you have here, for the concept of zero
    tolerance in school; stand up for the concept that gangs and drugs are
    wrong; stand up for the idea that you have to participate in a
    partnership with the police

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    if you want a safe neighborhood, a safe street, and a safe school.
        You have shown what you can do here, but you mark my words, you will
    have the best future any generation of Americans has ever known if
    you'll work for it, but only if we can make America a safe place again.
        So every one of you--we need your personal commitment: No to crime.
    No to guns. No to gangs. No to drugs. Yes to your own future. If you do
    that, your future will be the brightest of any generation in American
    history.
        Thank you, and God bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke at 1:45 p.m. in the gymnasium. In his remarks,
    he referred to Representative Richard A. Gephardt's wife, Jane; Mayor
    Terry Williams of Webster Groves, MO; William Gussner, superintendent of
    schools; John Johnson, band director; Debbie Genovese, art teacher; and
    Webster Groves High School student Jocelyn Grant.