Bush closed his Calvin College address by posing a stark choice to the graduates: 'Will you be a spectator or a citizen?' He invoked Abraham Kuyper, the Dutch prime minister and founder of institutions including a university, who had traveled to Grand Rapids to urge Dutch immigrants not to retreat behind their own walls but to go out and make a difference as citizens. The president's call to service reflected Calvin College's own ethos of graduates as 'agents of renewal across the Earth.' He pointed to specific examples — Big Brothers/Big Sisters mentoring, Bethany Christian Services adoption work, and former Calvin student Vern Ehlers serving in Congress — to argue that the tradition of active citizenship was not a partisan idea but an American one.