Good morning and thank you for being here. This is my first opportunity to celebrate the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday and Unity Week at Ball State, and I certainly hope it is the first of many.

I understand this is the second year we have held this event on campus, and we are pleased to be an integral part of the celebration. I would like to thank our co-sponsors this morning, First Merchants and the Muncie Chapter of Indiana Black Expo.

I want to welcome Mayor Dan Canan, who will be reading a proclamation in a few minutes. That proclamation is just one small example of the mayor's much greater commitment to issues regarding recognition of Dr. King. Thank you, Mayor Canan.

Also later today, more than a dozen students from East Central Indiana schools will be recognized. I'd like to congratulate you in advance, welcome you to our campus, and remind you that when you're ready to apply to college-we're right here-and we're excellent.

Welcome also to our speakers and performers, to the Collective Coalition of Concerned Clergy, and especially to Pastor Bryant Crumes, who has served as chair of the city's Martin Luther King Jr. Day committee for the past two years. With this morning's program and this evening's march and service, you and your committee have done a wonderful job producing a program that truly honors the memory of Dr. King and reminds us of the values for which he lived and died.

At the risk of jumping too far ahead, I want to invite all of you back to campus tomorrow night for an outstanding program at 7 p.m. in Emens Auditorium. Dr. Clayborne Carson will speak and then take part in a question-and-answer session.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Dr. Carson, let me hit just a couple of the highlights from his résumé. Dr. Carson:

• is a professor at Stanford;
• served as senior advisor on the landmark PBS series on the civil rights movement, Eyes on the Prize;
• was a member of the collaborative team that created the winning proposal in an international competition to design a national memorial to Dr. King in Washington, D. C.;
• and, perhaps his greatest contribution to preserving the King legacy, is director of the King Papers Project, which, so far, has produced four of a projected fourteen-volume comprehensive edition of Dr. King's speeches, sermons, correspondence, publications, and unpublished writings.

In addition to these volumes, he has written or co-edited numerous other works based on the papers, including The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr., compiled from Dr. King's autobiographical writings.  This should be an exceptional evening, and I hope you can join us.

Dr. Carson will no doubt share with us some of the inspiring words of Dr. King, whose eloquence shone in speech after speech. I am particularly struck by two lines from Dr. King's 1964 remarks as he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize.

He said he accepted the award "with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind." To express such optimism in light of all that Dr. King had suffered to that point provides us with a glimpse of what made him so remarkable. I would hope our gathering here today demonstrates in some small way that he had every reason to have faith in America and the future of mankind.

Given what we know about the progress that has been made over the last 40 years and how much more still needs to be done, what he said next has lasting relevance. Dr. King said, "I refuse to accept the idea that the 'isness' of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal 'oughtness' that forever confronts him."

What am I doing and what ought I do? Those are the questions Dr. King posed. Dr. King believed we all have the ability to make a difference. Even those who would appear powerless can affect change through action, and those of us who have a certain standing in the country have an even greater moral obligation to use our positions to achieve positive change.

I've always felt Dr. King was as much an educator as he was a preacher. Through his words and actions he brought a greater understanding of the socioeconomic and political conditions in which not just African Americans but all those who were disenfranchised lived during the 1950s and '60s. And like a great teacher, he encouraged all of us to open our eyes to the reality of life and our minds to the pursuit of a better world-one that explored the possibilities inherent in working together rather than one that promoted divisiveness-that's the "oughtness" of which he spoke at the Nobel awards ceremony.

In education today, and especially at Ball State, we believe that recruiting faculty, staff, and students that represent the broad social and ethnic fabric of the United States-and the world-is vitally important. It's important because it allows us to learn from each other, to learn to live with each other, and to understand how moving forward collaboratively weaves greater strength into the fabric of our society.

We are committed to these ideals at Ball State. It's why we have programs such as the Urban Semester Program that encourages student teachers to experience the challenges and rewards of working in an urban school environment. Once they graduate, many who have gone through the program return to urban schools to teach.  It's why we sought a federal Gear Up grant. We're in the midst of that five-year grant, which is helping low-income students as young as sixth grade think about and prepare for college. It's why we have the Summer Scholars Program that brings minority students to Ball State for a week in the summer to live on campus, take classes, and talk to our students and staff about college.  There are other examples of what we are doing, but we know there is so much more we ought to do, and as this university moves forward, we will continue to search for even more ways to open our doors to students from all ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic backgrounds.

What are we doing, and what ought we do? Those questions should come to mind everyday, not just today. On the day Dr. King was killed, Robert Kennedy gave a speech in Indianapolis that many say helped keep peace across the nation. In those remarks, the message of what we ought to do came through when Senator Kennedy said, "We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times; we've had difficult times in the past; we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; it is not the end of disorder.

But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings who abide in our land."

We are honored to have you here today. I look forward to getting to know those of you I have not yet met, and I pledge my commitment to working with you to make our community even more of a place that is doing what it ought to do to promote peace, harmony, and justice.