Last week, Syracuse University announced that former President Bill Clinton will speak at their commencement on May 11.
I guess Jon Westling was busy that day.
The selection of Bill Clinton is the result of Syracuse’s new, amazing and revolutionary concept for determining their commencement speaker: democracy. That’s right, as of this year, SU will be selecting their commencement speakers based on the opinions, nominations and selections of their very own students!
According to SU’s newspaper, The Daily Orange, students were dissatisfied with their lack of input on and involvement in the selection of last year’s speaker, former New York Governor Rudy Giuliani. In response to students’ complaints, SU chancellor Kenneth Shaw formed a Commencement Speaker Advisory Board to review the old commencement selection process and suggest potential revisions. The new advisory board reacted by developing a threefold process for students to actively help select the commencement speaker.
The process took place as follows: first, they assembled a selection committee consisting of faculty, staff and, most importantly, student representatives from all of the schools within the university and created a website, where students could log-in and make suggestions for commencement speakers. Second, the board reviewed the selections with the help of the student representatives and narrowed the list to 15 potential commencement speaker candidates. Third, the board presented the 15 candidates to Chancellor Shaw, who chose the speaker based upon ‘availability, affordability and appropriateness.’
Somewhere in the arctic wasteland of upstate New York, Syracuse students are surely rejoicing in the selection of a very accomplished, popular commencement speaker. At Boston University, however, students are surely still reeling from last year’s selection and dreading the announcement for this year. When it comes to commencement speakers, if Syracuse is a democracy, then BU is a dictatorship.
While claiming to entertain students’ suggestions, BU’s procedure for selecting a commencement speaker does not actively involve its student body. According to BU spokesman Kevin Carlton, commencement speakers are nominated either from among those who will be receiving honorary BU degrees at graduation or from among those suggested and sought out by administrators and faculty. Once suggested, nominations are reviewed by senior administrators and the chancellor’s office, and ultimately decided upon by the Board of Trustees.
Last year, BU’s failure to include its future graduates in the selection of former president Jon Westling as commencement speaker created thousands of outraged graduates, parents and alumni. Students wanted a new, original guest speaker to inspire, entertain and wish them well on their graduation day; they did not want to hear from someone who had already addressed them.
Similarly, parents also wanted a commencement complete with a distinguished guest speaker; not Jon Westling, the man who not only addressed them many times before, but also was responsible for four years of generous tuition increases. The selection of Westling as commencement speaker and BU students’ adverse reactions fueled an online Boston University Commencement Petition, which gathered more than 2,500 signatures and was later presented to W. Norman Johnson, dean of students.
When their students were disappointed with their commencement speaker, SU addressed the issue by creating a more democratic and inclusive selection procedure. At BU, however, the combination of last year’s unsatisfactory selection and the university’s failure to actively include student opinion seems a harbinger of disappointment for this year.
In addition to the lack of student input, BU is an unattractive speaking venue overall. Sure, BU seniors have worked hard, and they’ve definitely paid enough. But let’s face it, who would really want to speak here? What high-profile, distinguished speakers would want to associated themselves with BU? Would someone like President Clinton be eager to address a school that was most notably in the press this year for disbanding a high school Gay/Straight Alliance? Or would he want to stand beside a man, who has refused to include homosexuals in the university’s non-discrimination code and has made sexist remarks regarding the percentage of males compared with females within the university? In the past year, our chancellor generated enough negative press to repel even the most desperate of famous attention seekers.
With little or no value given to our own suggestions for speakers and a chancellor hell-bent on spouting off to the press, it will probably be difficult for the university to entice a distinguished speaker like Clinton this year. And at this rate, the class of 2003 should consider itself lucky if the university is able to attract the runner up of ‘Celebrity Mole 2’ or the cast of ‘The Surreal Life.’