Students should OK graduation speakers
Amber Bissell is one of the few people who would argue that politics are overly important in the lives of Americans (“Commencement is a time to put aside politics,” May 14), berating students’ wishes to turn down keynote speakers such as Dick Cheney and Laura Bush in favor of Jon Stewart or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
Being a commencement speaker is a significant honor granted by those planning the commencement ceremonies.
The invitation to speak is an acknowledgment that this person has made some profound and positive accomplishment in his or her field. The speaker is therefore considered worthy to pass on wisdom.
BYU, as an institution, granted its approval of Cheney’s work in politics and labeled it exceptional. This fact is even more clearly emphasized by BYU’s decision to simultaneously gift the vice president with an honorary doctorate in public service.
For those BYU students who protested Cheney’s speech and those UCLA students who resisted Laura Bush’s keynote address in 2002, their politics no doubt play an important role in their decision to protest.
To force these people to sit through their once-in-a-lifetime commencement with a keynote address from a person whose work they do not admire would disrespect the graduates and dishonor the accomplishments they made at their university.
You can’t please everyone. But schools have no business giving honors to public figures who their student body does not respect.
Aaron Richardson
Fourth-year,
political science
Liberals’ teachings foster intolerance
Amber Bissell’s column (“Commencement is a time to put aside politics,” May 14) is a refreshing call to civility.
Her plea for students to set aside their personal politics to enjoy a day of celebration is incredibly wise, but it brings about some serious questions as to the way students are being educated on college campuses.
She gives examples of students reacting negatively to speakers from the Bush family or administration. This is reminiscent of a trend where conservative speakers are continually threatened, drowned out by loud protest, attacked or uninvited due to student actions.
However, curiously absent from these moments of student hostility and incivility are conservative students treating liberal speakers badly.
I feel this has little to do with liberal versus conservative, but more so is an effect of the manner by which students are taught by liberal professors.
Bissell is spot-on with her suggestion that “college graduation shouldn’t be turned into a political movement. We shouldn’t create drama on a day when there should be none.”
The problem is that modern liberalism is not capable of that. Students are taught to personalize everything. “Activism” has replaced character and decency.
Politics and group membership based on race or sexual preference have become one’s identity in lieu of an identity defined by character and relationships with others.
People are given full permission to be despicable and to hurt everyone around them as long as they believe in the right politics.
Students are routinely taught that the make-up of an individual is their political beliefs.
This is why liberals continually devalue anyone who disagrees with them. Conservatives aren’t simply wrong or misguided, they are stupid, racist, evil, liars, homophobic, etc.
People are multifaceted, and our politics are not our character.
There are fantastically decent people of all political persuasions and there are fantastically awful people of all political persuasions.
However, students are being indoctrinated with a systematic prejudice to automatically devalue and despise those who are not in agreement with them politically. As a result, they are able to justify bad behavior.
Students, and people in general, would fare far better in their everyday lives if they laid off the politics and concentrated on that all-important aspect of humanity valued by Martin Luther King Jr: the content of character.
Joel Schwartz
Class of 2003,
Former Viewpoint columnist