Cronkite to Yale

NEW HAVEN, Conn.--Walter Cronkite has agreed to deliver the Class Day speech at Yale next May, the Yale Daily News reported last week.

The former CBS anchorman, who delivered the Class Day address at Harvard in 1980, was the fifth choice of Yale seniors. Their first four choices--Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, Garry Trudeau, Woody Allen and Alan Alda--all turned down invitations to speak.

Cronkite's secretary initially said she did not think he would speak, so the Yale senior class secretary contacted the next names on the list--Johnny Carson, Bill Cosby, Russell Baker and Potter Stewart. "They all turned us down before Cronkite's secretary called back to say that he did want to speak," Elizabeth Oestreich, class secretary, said, adding that at one point it looked as though all the invitations would be turned down.

A special effort was made this year to start the search for a speaker early, after students expressed disappointment with last year's speaker, Carl Sagan.

"Sagan was uninspiring, unprepared and spoke off the top of his head," Rufus Marx said, adding that this year's class should find someone who would take the job more seriously.