The main speaker of the day was a 68-year-old. But he was Maurice Sendak, an illustrator and author who is well known for his children's books including "Where the Wild Things Are" and "In the Night Kitchen." Mr. Sendak, who said that he had never graduated from college or high school, used a metaphor borrowed from Herman Melville and urged the class of 1996 to be a "generation of deep-sea divers," who accomplish things and tell the truth.

After the opening procession, in which members of the class of 1998 carried the flower chains, Claire V. Johnston, a graduating senior from Berkeley, Calif., presented Vassar with a $4,618.06 gift from the class of 1996. It is to be used for the restoration of a campus fountain and for scholarships, career development and athletics.

In addition to Mr. Sendak, the other speakers included Vassar's president, Frances Daly Fergusson, and Michael D. Keenan, the senior class president.

Mr. Keenan remembered the first moment he saw Vassar. "It's so beautiful here," he said, "that I thought I hope I don't break anything. You have to understand, I come from Queens."

State University at Binghamton

The State University of New York at Binghamton, a campus navigating its way through new financial cuts at a time when the entire southern tier is already economically depressed, put its hopes for prosperity yesterday in 3,153 graduates, including a half-dozen women who put letters on their caps to spell "Will Work for Food."

The university president, Lois B. De Fleur, opened the commencement ceremony by acknowledging alumni from the school's first year, 1946. "We had 600 students who attended classes in unheated Quonset huts and carried their chairs from class to class," she said. "While our budget hasn't gotten that bad," she said, "we have faith it won't."

The keynote speaker, Clifton Wharton Jr., the Chancellor of the State University of New York from 1978 to 1987, told students he abandoned his "The Future is Yours" speech for one that criticized the belief that corporate-downsizing and cost-cutting techniques can be applied to public education.