c. 2007 Religion News Service
(UNDATED) When Brigham Young University senior Ashley Sanders looked around at her commencement ceremony on April 25, she felt a surge of pride so great it brought her to tears.
It wasn’t the completion of her degree in English and philosophy that moved her. It was pulling off an “alternative” ceremony that drew 50 fellow graduates and an estimated 1,500 supporters, some of whom travelled 150 miles to attend. Angered by the choice of Vice President Dick Cheney as BYU’s official commencement speaker, Sanders and others raised $26,000, organized the off-campus ceremony and invited progressive activist Ralph Nader to address them.
“It’s the biggest thing I’ve ever done,” Sanders, 21, said in an interview. “I’ve never felt prouder.”
Though few are as organized as Sanders’, yearly disputes over commencement speakers have become as much a part of part of college life as all-nighters and spring break.
College presidents say they are under increasing pressure to bring in a big-name speaker who will give graduates and their families something to remember.
“Within academia there is an awareness of how big endowments are and who your commencement speaker is,” said James Towey, president of St. Vincent College in Latrobe, Pa. “There are some presidents who have been burned by commencement speakers and there are some who have been burnished.”
But finding a speaker can lead presidents _ particularly those who head religious schools _ into a predicament: Do they try to land someone who’ll lend prestige, or at least media attention, to their campus? Or do they honor their institutional identity by finding someone who wholly embodies their values?
“A president has to be very careful about that,” said Paul Corts, president of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. “That’s a very tenuous line you walk.”
In 2005, President Bush drew protests from students and faculty at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich.; Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice got a cool reception from some theologians at Jesuit-run Boston College last year.
At St. Vincent, Towey has been on the job less than a year. The former director of the White House’s Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives, he has watched his tiny campus grow atwitter since Bush was announced as Friday’s (May 11) commencement speaker.
Thirty current and former St. Vincent professors sent an open letter to Bush telling him that his policies on the Iraq War, the economy and the environment, as well as his “fear mongering,” don’t square with Catholic teachings. A student town-hall forum was broadcast on C-SPAN, and Towey and a former St. Vincent president, Maynard Brennan, traded op-ed barbs in the local paper.
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Brennan, who led St. Vincent from 1963 to 1969, said Bush’s visit will tarnish the 161-year-old college’s Benedictine, peace-loving legacy.
“A commencement speaker is a living example of … virtue, sending graduates forth with vision and hope. I have serious misgivings that President Bush can fill this exalted role,” Brennan wrote.
In response, Towey wrote that Brennan has a “myopic view of Catholic moral teaching and the Bush presidency.”
“You’re not going to get a speaker who’s 100 percent in accordance with Catholic teaching unless you get the pope, and even he’ll get protested,” Towey said in an interview.
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Though the topic of commencement speakers is not often on the official agenda at yearly meetings of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, it is frequently discussed, Corts said.
“You bet your boots we have people talking about that in the hallways,” Corts said. “Talking about, `How much flak did you get over this or that, names that weren’t a problem for you, if you got this kind of flak how did you handle it.”’
For the last nine years, Catholic presidents have had the Cardinal Newman Society, a conservative group often critical of Catholic colleges and universities, looking over their shoulders. The Manassas, Va.-based society publicizes a list of “problematic” commencement speakers each spring, pressuring Catholic schools to drop those who aren’t in line with church teaching _ particularly on abortion and other “life issues.”
This year the society targeted 11 schools _ including St. Michael’s College in Vermont and Villanova University in Philadelphia, for inviting journalists Cokie Roberts and Chris Matthews, respectively. The group says both support abortion rights.
The society’s founder, Patrick Reilly, says he’s just calling attention to what the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said in a 2004 document, “Catholics in Political Life.”
“The Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions,” the bishops’ document says.
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There are few bigger platforms than a commencement address, said the Very Rev. David M. O’Connell, president of the Catholic University of America in Washington.
“The commencement is prime-time TV. It’s a super-visible platform,” he said.
O’Connell, who has held his job since 1998, said he usually starts feeling the pressure to find a prominent speaker each October.
“Whether you give in to that pressure is another thing. My first priority is to select someone whose values are consonant with the institution,” he said. This year, O’Connell invited White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, who’ll give the address to Catholic students Saturday (May 12).
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Having a high-profile figure can add luster to religious universities and colleges, but the invite can benefit the speaker as well, said Charles Dunn, dean of Regent University’s Robertson School of Government.
When Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney gave the commencement address May 5 at Regent, founded by religious broadcaster Pat Robertson, it was a “golden-platter opportunity for him to address a large evangelical Christian audience,” Dunn said.
Robertson, though, caught some heat from students and alumni, who asked why he invited a Mormon to address the conservative Christian school.
Sanders, the BYU student, was criticized by other Mormons. Progressives are a distinct minority in Provo, Utah, home to the Mormon-run BYU campus. Criticizing Republicans like Cheney is often taken as apostasy, Sanders said.
BYU spokeswoman Carrie Jenkins said 6,000 students graduated at the official ceremoney and Cheney received a standing ovation. She also said the alternative commencement “was not supported or encouraged by the university.”
Though Sanders’ late grandfather was a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, one of the highest offices in Mormon church, she was accused of “losing her testimony” and taking drugs. Friends abandoned her.
Still, she said, it was worth the effort.
“I very strongly feel that it’s really important in my church to not equate the Gospel or the church with a certain political party or a certain kind of thinking,” Sanders said.
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