On June 17 it was Chelsea's turn. Her father had made the transition from President to private citizen months before, and her mother had long ago embraced her new life as a senator. Now, graduating from the semi-protective cocoon of Stanford University—where her Secret Service detail wore student-style clothes and rode mountain bikes to blend in—Chelsea Clinton was ready for some changes of her own. Commencement speaker Carly Fiorina, CEO of the Hewlett-Packard company, might as well have been addressing her directly when she recalled thinking, after graduating from Stanford 25 years ago, "It's my life. I can do what I want."
And so can Chelsea. But first, some fun. A band belted out jazz as Chelsea, 21, and 1,767 soon-to-be grads filed into the Stanford football stadium. It was Father's Day, and the crowd had already given the former First Parents a standing ovation when Chelsea doffed her black sandals and joined an impromptu game of kickball with friends during a brief pre-ceremony tradition known as the Wacky Walk. As a warm-up the night before, Bill and Hillary threw a party at the university art museum that drew 800 guests—including Chelsea's date, Benjamin Cahn, 21, an Oberlin College music major from Bethesda, Md. ("He was absolutely the cutest thing there," says caterer Jesse Cool, who prepared the event's organic fare.) To those who know her, it seemed a fitting ending for a rewarding four years. "Chelsea's perfectly conscious that she's a public figure, yet she maintains such strong personal contact with people," says fellow history major Max Edleson. "I think she'll leave here with a lot of good memories."
By all accounts Clinton was due for a celebration. After taking time off last fall to campaign for her mother and travel on state trips with her father, she had to hustle to complete her senior thesis—a 167-page history of the Northern Ireland peace process, complete with interviews with Dad. "I've been doing honors theses at Stanford for more than 20 years, and I haven't seen too many which were as thoroughly researched as hers," says her adviser, history professor Jack Rakove.
In the midst of it all she sneaked in a May 25 visit to Oxford University for the opening of an American studies institute there—and to meet with tutors. She plans to begin a master's degree in history or international relations this October at Oxford's University College. Where will she stay? No one is certain, but Secret Service agents were recently seen inspecting the two-room suite in a converted 19th-century almshouse where Bill Clinton lived as a Rhodes Scholar in the late '60s. "It will be an adjustment," says Hillary's former press secretary Lisa Caputo of the Clinton family's latest intercontinental arrangement. "But they are a threesome and will navigate it together, as they have before."
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