As we near the end of the annual rite of spring known as “The Commencement Speaker Controversy”, a ritual accompanied gigantic heaps of sanctimonious blather attacking (or defending) student protesters, university administrators and invited (or disinvited) speakers, former college president Colin Diver has a bracing column that gets right to the heart of the matter:
The problem is the institution of commencement speeches. If college presidents really had courage, they would get rid of the outside commencement speaker altogether. And while they are at it, they would stop handing out honorary degrees at commencement.
What would happen instead?
… if we really want to decontaminate commencement, we should make it be exclusively for and by the students. Have two or three student speakers, drawn from different disciplines. Have student musicians provide the musical interludes. Have student artists display their creations. Give prizes for student theses.
The outside speaker at the commencement I attended this spring was fine (except for focusing his talk solely on the United States when nearly 20% of the university’s graduates are citizens of other nations); but the student speakers rocked. They captured the excitement, the struggle and the intimacy of what the graduates had experienced together over the past few years and created a means to celebrate all of that in the presence of the academy to which they had earned entrance, and of their friends and families who had come to celebrate with them.
Isn’t that what the day is supposed to be all about?
Crossposted at: masscommons.wordpress.com