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Barbara Pierce Bush: Commencement Address at Wellesley College Thank you. Thank you, very much. Thank you very, very much, President Keohane. Mrs. Gorbachev, Trustees, Faculty, Parents, and I should say, Julia Porter, class president, and certainly my new best friend, Christine Bicknell -- and, of course, the Class of 1990. I am really thrilled to be here today, and very excited, as I know you all must be, that Mrs. Gorbachev could join us. These are exciting times. Theyre exciting in Washington, and I have really looked forward to coming to Wellesley. I thought it was going to be fun. I never dreamt it would be this much fun. So, thank you for that. More than ten years ago, when I was invited here to talk about our experiences in the Peoples Republic of China, I was struck by both the natural beauty of your campus and the spirit of this place. Wellesley, you see, is not just a place but an idea -- an experiment in excellence in which diversity is not just tolerated, but is embraced. The essence of this spirit was captured in a moving speech about tolerance given last year by a student body president of one of your sister colleges. She related the story by Robert Fulghum about a young pastor, finding himself in charge of some very energetic children, hits upon a game called Giants, Wizards, and Dwarfs. You have to decide now, the pastor instructed the children, which you are -- a giant, a wizard or a dwarf? At that, a small girl tugging at his pants leg, asked, But where do the mermaids stand? And the pastor tells her there are no mermaids. And she says, Oh yes there are. I am a mermaid. Now this little girl knew what she was, and she was not about to give up on either her identity, or the game. She intended to take her place wherever mermaids fit into the scheme of things. Where do the mermaids stand? All of those who are different, those who do not fit the boxes and the pigeonholes? Answer that question, wrote Fulghum, And you can build a school, a nation, or a wh