[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.