A commencement myth debunked
We just announced Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne as our commencement speaker. And inevitably, people ask me how did the University choose the speaker, what are our criteria for determining a speaker, etc.
Obviously you want to get someone who will deliver a meaningful message. A respected individual who will bring something special to the campus and the graduates. I think students would like to have Jon Stewart or Oprah or someone famous in a pop culture sense (maybe not as interesting to their parents, who knows). A lot of schools get some of those big name speakers because they pay the speakers to come - often at shockingly high speaker fees.
Wake Forest does not pay its commencement speaker. I am proud of this fact, because it means that we are using the University’s resources on other things - our students, our faculty - and not on a 15 minute speech.
The challenge this raises, though, is that we have to have a personal connection to a speaker to get them to speak gratis. We look to our alumni, parents, and friends with connections to key speakers to help us. If you have a connection to a world-class speaker, please do let us know.
If by “using the University’s resources on other things” you mean things like an ugly arch on the Quad, new structures to hang fliers around campus that came down as quickly as they went up, and expensive plaques to replace greek letters on the dorms, then you are correct. But to say that the resources are going to faculty is a serious embellishment. If this were true, their salaries would match the salaries of similar universities, not lag behind. Lets be serious, President Hatch makes four times as much as the highest asking price for a speaker, and all he’s done is thrown away the SAT.
So, when a student who has just paid over 120,000 dollars for an education wants a speaker she will remember at her college commencement ceremony, I don’t think it is unreasonable.
- Friday, October 31, 2008 12:04 am