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'So Bummed:' Lack of Guest Speaker for UM Class of '17 Irritates Some Graduates

April 23, 2017, 3:52 PM by  Alan Stamm

The University of Michigan hosts its 200th commencement next Saturday, but not all seniors applaud a break with tradition that day.

Instead of hearing a notable guest speaker, graduates will see a seven-minute presentation of past speakers on video and professors reading excerpts from earlier dignitaries.

The bicentennial is an "opportunity to honor the graduates of the Class of 2017, along with the amazing 200-year-old legacy of excellence and impact that they are joining," President Mark Schlissel says in a statement.

"I’m so bummed about having a video replace a human for my graduation," responds senior Harrison Krinsky,  writing in The Michigan Daily. "There is literally nothing profound about a video."

Others also are disappointed. "Our big day is shaping up to be underwhelming," says Julia Gips, student government president at UM's College of Literature, Science, and the Arts.

► Update: At our Facebook page, reader Amy L. Minkley of Wayne comments Saturday afternoon:
"So disappointing for my hard-working graduating son and his fellow classmates! Shame on UofM!"

The university's position is that "a single voice is not enough to fully celebrate 200 years of accomplishments," as MLive quotes spokeswoman Kim Broekhuizen as saying.

Series of political stars

Last May at Michigan Stadium, graduates heard Michael Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor. Among others at the commencement podium in recent years were Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Rick Snyder.

Next weekend's video presentation is being produced by Malcolm Tulip, assistant professor of theatre and drama, who's quoted after Schlissel in the recent statement  on "unique bicentennial elements" in the April 29 ceremony. 

"This project assembles a series of excerpts from significant speeches from the university's past. In seven minutes," he says, "graduating students and their families will gain a sense of their place in the university and nation's history."

In his campus daily commentary, Krinsky -- a history major from San Francisco -- says he fellow seniors can see videos online anytime. "My fantasy graduation inspiration is a singular moment . . . on the 20-yard line of the Big House listening to Hillary Clinton or John Stewart or Barack Obama or whomever."

'They did what?'

Instead, he adds, "it kinda feels like one of those things that we’re gonna look back on and think, 'They did what?'”

Krinsky concludes:

The reason, maybe, this speech is causing more outrage than things we all agree are more pressing is because it taps into a special kind of existential dread. A fear that life is a set of small compromises you have to make with your own understanding of what a happy life looks like, one which is getting sent off by a YouTube video.

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Two other seniors speak out earlier in The Michigan Daily:

♦ “It was definitely a huge slap in the face to all the grads. The commencement speaker is really the only aspect of the whole event that many people even care about, so this is just another way the university shows its students how little it cares about us as individuals.

”Considering the amount of money paid and debt accrued by so many of us, to reach our culminating moment and not have something to look forward to with this event is disheartening, honestly." -- Nicholas Suárez, computer science major

♦ "We've spent four years building up to this, to our graduation, and hearing about all of these amazing speakers in the past. I'm from Ann Arbor, so I remember the year Obama came. I remember being so excited about who my graduation speaker would be, and anticipating it. . . . It just really feels like the university is trying so hard to promote itself that it’s not at all concerned about what students actually want to see in commencement.

"“Nobody wants to sit in the big house and watch a video clip of graduation addresses aimed at different years. We want our own speaker with . . . our own ceremony. It's taking away a huge part of graduation that, honestly, is the only part of the whole-school graduation I was looking forward to.” -- Maggie Cowles, education major  


Read more:  The Michigan Daily


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