Commencement: Revisionism, Permissiveness, and Internationalist Love of Morals

A fair warning before I begin: What I have to say is quite harsh on this score. I recommend stopping reading if you should want a boring, commencement is beautiful speech.

Commencement is one of those times in which the principles of the college are to be showcased and celebrated.

Commencements are the time in which students are reminded for one last time of the lessons they have learned as they move out from the school, commencing their own lives independent of the college. The students go forth and become the greatest evangelists for the school. They are the advertising boards for the college.

With these thoughts in mind, I must say that I was horribly disappointed by the speeches of Kirthi Narasimhan '08, Mayor Thomas C. Leppert '77, and President Pamela B. Gann.

Alas, I do not have the text of the speeches before me so you shall have to do with my reliance on my notes. (Any video, by the way, would be much appreciated so that those who were not present may watch.)

It is apparent that the current policy of the college, a policy that allows the students to pick their commencement speaker from amongst their ranks, is flawed. Like its election of its student president in which policies aren't advocated and students are elected by a popularity contest, the commencement speaker becomes little more than the embodiment of what the masses want, rather than a representative member of the academic excellence of the college.

Although I would hasten picking the best student because those who are the best academically may not be the best speakers, I would suggest that the college give the students a preliminary list of its top students. The students may then vote for that student which is the top rather than the one who is just a crowd pleaser.

Kirthi relies on the time machine motif. I shall forgive him his trite metaphor, but with any invocation of history, comes the obligation to get that history accurate. Kirthi failed to do due diligence when he mentioned, proudly, the public -- and personal -- shame of the 100 Day boat party. Patrick Weisman has already written on that history, but I thought I should give it a run-down so that you can see just how revisionist Kirthi's history is.

Kirthi, as Senior Class President, threw the 100 Day Party as part of his duty. Patrick Weisman summarizes how awful that night turned out.

Weisman writes,

Here's a quick summary of what I can say with reasonable certainty transpired in the hour and a half spent aboard this glorious vessel.

• Students were caught stealing bottles of hard alcohol out of the bar's storage area
• Students threw chairs overboard from the third floor deck
• After our party organizers convinced the crew to expel only the evil-doers, those students became rude and belligerent towards the staff

Shortly after that, the bars stopped serving alcohol. You can only imagine the class our fellow students displayed towards the bartenders at this moment. After the crew had endured enough verbal and physical harassment, a decision was made; enough was enough. Time to go home.

The whole class was sent home because the Class Leadership said that it was either going to go turn in only three rule breakers or they would turn no one in. Eventually, it was decided by the Class Leadership that no one would be turned in and that everyone would suffer for the acts of a few.

Kirthi spun it today as if getting throw off the boat was something to be proud of. He essentially boasted that they were having too much fun and that the crew couldn't handle it. Given that both fecal matter and vomit were found on the buses as reported by the bus companies, I wonder if anyone could handle that style of fun.

It ill befits a Class President to rewrite his Class's shame. That he would even mention "wearing" the last night after a hard night of partying before an audience of a few thousand is unfortunate, to say the least. Are these really his final words to his class? Are these the final words for which he wants to be remembered?
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One of the more memorable lines from Mayor Leppert '77 was his insistence that college students go out and "collect life experiences." As to which life experiences, he was non-specific. Presumably, cocaine habits and driving down one way streets are all undertakings to which we should subscribe. You only live once, you know...

After all, Leppert said that you find you regret more of the things you don't do than the things you do. He suggest that principles are "your own" rather than the fundamental constants of the human experience.

But earlier in the speech, Leppert bragged about the strong "green" record of Dallas. I have already blogged about the sheer stupidity of that record, but I thought it would bear repeating.

As Mayor, Leppert spearheaded a new ordinance that mandated strict energy standards that recently passed into law.

Rather than reform the state-controlled sectors that dominate the Dallas water and energy markets, Leppert demanded that the people ration.

Among the first phase's requirements, effective Oct. 1, 2009: Builders of projects less than 50,000 square feet must use 15 percent less energy and 20 percent less water than current Dallas code standards mandate.

Under the new code, for example, builders must select four water conservation techniques among six options provided, such as installing faucets and shower heads with a two-gallon-per-minute-or-less water flow.

The message is clear. You may go and collect as many "life experiences" as you wish, but don't you dare build your home on your property as you wish. Instead, you shall be required to pay more for your property to get it up to a code that someone else has designed is better for your uses than you.

My not-so bold prediction is that most of the small businesses and home builders that would have been inclined to build in Dallas will go elsewhere so as to avoid the costs, taking their business with them. It will be likely be another situation like that which occurred in Palo Alto, CA in which very high maintenance codes deterred new homes from being built (for a period of ten years) and therefore raising the prices sky high and forcing poorer people out.

A man's home is his castle. It is the place in which he raises his children, keeps his affairs and his other property, and if he is lucky, reclines from a long day's work. How dare Mr. Leppert suggest that he is being empathic, like all good leaders, when he votes for laws that have the net effect of rendering a man's property useless in his own hands. To cap a man's energy use is to render him a slave to some bureaucrat's notions of what is a proper amount of energy. I reject it out of hand. You ought to use what you pay for and pay for what you use. Is that really such a hard concept?

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President Gann's speech was more of the usual boilerplate we've come to expect. She spends much of her talk glorifying the international at the expense of local. A president's job is to remind the college of the values upon which the college was built. Her speeches are just a collection of tiny trite statements than an argument in favor of the school.

I do not recall a single time she mentioned our motto, "Civilization prospers with commerce." Is it because she is embarrassed by it?

Whereas Benson, Claremont McKenna's founder, used to wrestle with his brilliant speeches, it is obvious that Gann delivers them slapdash, without a care as to how they are expressed and as to what principles they articulate. Benson's speeches are archived for posterity. Would anyone bother to do such a thing with anything Gann has said?

Gann's obsession with the non-profit was made clear once more in her insistence that students go and work in the non-profit sector. It is a theme we have heard again and again, and Gann has yet to give us a satisfactory answer as to why that would be a worthwhile cause. Why is self-sacrifice for the sake of self-sacrifice worthy? As an aside, whenever Gann mentions self-sacrifice -- I will not call it charity -- she leaves out the armed services. I wonder why.

Whereas the college once brought some of the finest thinkers and statesmen on the planet, Gann lists all the speakers we have had grace our campus this year and last. She lists in order, building up to its ultimate speaker, Bono, a man whose politics she enjoys. Gann never explores the economic consequences of his activism, nor does she mention the exorbitant cost of Bono - $100,000 compared to Justice Scalia, who cost but $10,000.

And yet all of the speakers that President Gann mentioned were progressives. Anderson Cooper and Bono are achievements? I think not.

Orhan Pamuk and Antonin Scalia were the exceptions, but naturally Gann goofed up in her pronunciation of one of the seminal law thinkers of the last fifty years. Maybe that's why we paid ten times for Bono than we did for Scalia. Might our President have a lopsided sense of worth? Perhaps that's why she's so insistent that students and families that have just been through the wringer to pay for college cannot enjoy them once they graduate.

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Final thoughts on the supposed "benediction:"

How do we have a "benediction" without a blessing? How do we have a benediction without God?

Benson once said that men who give up God must replace it with another form of higher morals and virtues. The rejection of God and the replacement with nothing was jarring, to say the least.

The speaker went on to say that the best part of her four years was that her parents weren't there. Yes, on the day that her parents had come to celebrate her accomplishments with her, she chose to snub them and their contribution to her education.

Here's to hoping next year will be better.