I just flashed on reading this that it would have been much more poingent if the students just started getting up and walking out. What a statement that would have been!
At least they’ll always remember who spoke at their graduation. I don’t.
Andrew Mayer: Taco Fight
ContraryBear: Fancy Dress Ball
Jason McCullough: Lion’s Den
Casper: Mashed Potatos*
Bill: Quip
*“If I’d know it was going to be one of those kinds of parties, I’d have stuck my dick in the mashed potatos.”
A. Leon Higginbotham spoke at mine. He was inspiring and awesome. If some politician had come instead, making a stump speech that had nothing to do with us, I would have heckled the shit out of him too.
Clinton spoke at mine. It was pretty amazing.
I didn’t attend my graduation. Actually, they might not have let me because it turned out I was one credit short of completing my degree and I had to get the last as transfer credit the following summer at Santa Monica college. Goddam guidance counselors. But, I probably wouldn’t have gone anyway. I have a strange distaste for public ceremonies.
I wonder why?
Errr I don’t know. Perhaps it has to do with social awkwardness and a lack of nice clothes at ready availability. (I suppose they would have supplied a robe or something, but I mean in general.)
The graduating class the year before me got Bush. There is no higher profile commencement speaker than the sitting President of the United States, right? Maybe the Pope. Anyway…
I got Erin Moriaty. And I had to look up her name, I generally remember her as “that reporter woman.” I hate Bush, but jeez. They handed out 7,000 degrees, you think they could’ve gotten someone I had heard of before or since.
The speaker at my graduation was this businessman from Chicago that went to my school and basically bought himself the podium. Here’s what he told us;
It’s ok to give a leg up to people of your race, everyone else does, I do. Strict adherence to moral and legal codes will stunt your ascent on the corporate ladder. Larry King is a jerk and you have your whole lives ahead of you.
The pope gave my commencement speech. High-profile, sure, but what a self-indulgent piece of crap. He shows up totally unprepared, then just rambled on for twenty minutes about how great it was to have your own city and how he could totally bang any woman he wanted if he hadn’t taken a vow of chastity. And then he closed with “don’t ever get caught raping a child more than three or four times.”
When people cry at graduation, it’s supposed to be the happy kind of tears. The students at this graduation were not happy.
Students and family members were shocked by the speech — and some left their own graduation in tears. Others booed or shouted. Still others are angry that the university administrator who followed the student speaker appeared to many to endorse his views. The university denies that, and the St. Thomas president and the student speaker have apologized. While St. Thomas officials said that they hope the apologies will put the matter to rest, many students and faculty members doubt that can happen.
Were the students who heckled the speaker justified, or was it just rude?
ST. Thomas is a Catholic school, right? I find it odd that gays and lesbians would even go to such a school. When I was looking at jobs, many of the schools like this actually had in their ads the line “Must be dedicated to the principles of Catholicism” or something similar. Many wanted you to sign something to the same effect. They are private schools, so it is their right to do so. Why anyone who is anti-Catholic would go there is beyond me. Of course, they may not be anti-Catholic, but Catholicism does (and should) denounce these acts just like the student speaker did.