LEWISTON – The sound of the Hathorn Hall bell brought 472 members of Bates College’s Class of 2009 together for the school’s 142nd commencement Sunday morning.

They heard talks by five honorary degree recipients who represented movies and television, journalism, education, biomechanics research and philanthropy. Each speaker offered advice for achieving various societal changes.

Academy Award-winning actress Geena Davis urged increases in the number of females seen by young people in film and TV.

“Society can only benefit if women are at the table,” she said.

About four years ago, Davis founded the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, a nonprofit organization dedicated to sponsoring academic research into gender representation, especially in children’s entertainment. In 15 years of studies it reviewed, she said some natural progress could be assumed to have taken place, but “the fact is, the ratio of male to female characters is not only dismal but has remained stagnant for several decades.”

Davis told the graduates that the studies “showed that our kids are seeing a very unbalanced world … three male characters for every one female.”

Davis also pointed out this country’s gender disparity in government.

Expanding on her commencement remarks, Davis told the Sun Journal that both the public and the entertainment industry can influence change in media gender counts.

“Change seems likely to happen when we reach a critical mass” of public concern, she said, “coupled with a desire of the industry” to present equality of gender representation.

Davis, a Massachusetts native, was awarded a Bates College honorary degree of Doctor of Fine Arts. She won a 1988 Academy Award for “The Accidental Tourist” and is widely known for her roles in “Thelma and Louise” and “A League of Their Own.” She also has competed for places on Olympic archery teams, and she is a member of Mensa.

CNN telejournalist and noted author Fareed Zakaria advised the members of the Bates Class of 2009 to “recognize that you are the change that you seek.”

He spoke about the relative ease in which news media report the world’s problems, but he emphasized, “what is always difficult to describe is the human response to the problems.”

He said, “you will do something because in every small way that you act, you act as productive economic beings, as moral beings, as social beings, and in all those actions, when collected together you change history.”

Zakaria received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letter degree.

The Rev. Robert M. Franklin Jr., who received the honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree at Sunday morning’s commencement, is president of Morehouse College, an historically black institution in Atlanta, Ga.

He told the Bates graduates they should “become, beware, be.” He urged them to become Renaissance men and women with social conscience and global perspective, to beware of the deadly sins of the modern world and to be “transformed nonconformists,” as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. advised.

Mimi A.R. Koehl received an honorary Doctor of Science degree. An expert in evolutionary and ecological biomechanics, she has investigated how living things do what they do so well. Her work includes explanations of how lobsters perceive odors and how insects got wings.

“Don’t be afraid to cross boundaries,” she said. She also told the graduates, “Life may be hard, but don’t let it be boring or superficial.”

Ralph T. Perry, Bates graduate in 1951 and resident of Orrs Island, was honored as one of Bates College’s most generous philanthropists. Perry is retired president of Maine-based Progressive Distributors and senior vice president of Hannaford Bros. He received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree.

Perry told the graduates to respect people, respect themselves and recognize those who helped them along the way.

Among the graduates was 75-year-old Carl Harris of Salem, Mass., who left Bates as a junior in 1954 to join the Army. He returned in 2006 and completed African American studies and women and gender studies, with a senior thesis examining black athletes and the Boston Celtics.

More than half of the graduates were from New England and 55 of them were from Maine.

Area graduates include Gretchen Schott Grebe, Lewiston; Hannah Lynne Giasson and Elizabeth Sutton Mitchell, both of Auburn; Lilian Beatrice Hanstein and Jessie Katherine Smith, both of Farmington; Matthew Ferris Chamberlin, Canton; Tyler Patrick Schoen, Wilton; and Thomas Shubrick Kothe, Paris.

The remainder of the Class of 2009 represented 185 students from other states and 26 students from other nations including Japan, Myanmar, Ecuador, Kosovo, Sri Lanka, Germany, Spain, El Salvador and Honduras.

In her remarks to the graduates, Bates President Elaine Tuttle Hansen praised them for their “awesome achievement and astounding promise.”

She also noted that they arrived on campus four years ago when Hurricane Katrina’s Gulf Coast devastation was making news, and their senior year began last fall under the gathering clouds of economic crisis. She told them that their period of study at Bates should serve as a reminder of “the fragility of our good fortune.”