Radcliffe College held its 79th Commencement exercises in the College Yard yesterday morning, despite an imminent storm which threatened to chase 500 candidates for degrees and 2,000 guests into the nearby buildings.

President Bunting conferred 241 Bachelor of Arts degrees, 211 graduate degrees, including 24 Ph.D.'s, and 60 certificates of the Harvard-Radcliffe Program in Business Administration. Sixty-six per cent of the senior class graduated with honors, achieving the highest academic record in College history.

Charles E. Bohlen '27, Special Assistant to the Secretary of State, delivered the Commencement address. He urged the graduating class to consider "what you can do during this period to make your individual contribution to your country's efforts to safeguard the values which you have received and which we are all trying to protect."

Bohlen quoted President Kennedy's Inaugural speech: "Ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country."

"It is difficult for you to find a comforting answer to this question," he declared. "It is not for us who are in your government to set forth a pattern and a concrete purpose for your lives."

"You must be aware of the fact that change is the normal, and not the unusual--that change is the central reality of our times," Bohlen warned. "We must draw from within us those things which the study of history has shown to be true and permanent, and stick to those with all the consciousness and dedication which we can muster."

After tracing the "fundamental changes that have occurred in the last generation," he concluded that in the future "the changes will be more rapid and more profound even than the ones I have depicted to you."

"Do not ever consider that what you have learned and understood here at Radcliffe, which has so great and real a pride in the history of education, can ever fully equip you for what the immediate period ahead will present to you," Bohlen warned. Nevertheless, he added, a Radcliffe education will at least provide the central elements of basic education and understanding "which you will draw on in making choices."

"The deepest aspiration of mankind recorded through the flow of history has always been a society and a condition under which the individual human person will find some expression for himself," Bohlen, father of a graduating senior, explained. The future "will require from you a greater flexibility and, in contrast, a greater attachment to the external verities if we are to survive," to preserve "the essential qualities of our civilization."

At the Commencement exercises, President Bunting awarded the Capt. Jonathan Fay prize to Mrs. Susan Gregg Warran '61, whose scholarship, conduct, and character gave evidence of the "highest promise" in the class. Mrs. Jean Huleatt Wheeler '48 received the Caroline I. Wil-by prize for the best Ph.D. thesis.