It’s That Time of Year
Apr 30th, 2007 at 7:07 am by PSoTD
for graduations.
I’ve always felt that graduation ceremonies are for graduates, their families and friends. That’s it. It’s their accomplishment that is being celebrated, their success at completing a program of higher education.
Colleges and universities don’t seem to believe that as much. It’s as if the institution has to take that one last bite at the apple, to get something into the heads of these young people as they see fit. Hence, the commencement speaker. Why don’t colleges survey their graduates to determine who they wish to have as speakers at commencement? Sure, pre-Internet, that couldn’t be done, but now it can. Why should graduates have to suffer through the rantings of someone they don’t appreciate on their big day?
Why should colleges treat this as being all about them? It’s really about marking the point of separation from them by graduates - so why let colleges make the choice for commencement speaker alone?
Perhaps St. Vincent College will pick up on this thrust, and won’t allow St. Vincent President Jim Towey to make such choices without graduating student approval in the future. That is, unless they want Cheney to speak there next year.
What are Jim Towey’s qualifications?
He’s a little too old to have gone to Regent University.