In the first commencement address ever delivered by a sitting president at a community college, President Bush called this afternoon for community-college graduates to play a leading role in rebuilding the Gulf Coast from the vast destruction of last year’s hurricanes.

“I ask you to rise to the challenge of a generation,” he told the 2006 graduating class at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College, in Perkinston, Miss. “Apply your skill and your knowledge, your compassion and your character, and help write a hopeful new chapter in the history of the Gulf Coast.” (The full text of the speech is available on the White House’s Web site.)

Hurricane Katrina is estimated to have caused about $19-million in damage at the college (The Chronicle, February 17).