May
27
2009
I was lucky enough to get a chance to stay at school this year while the seniors graduated.
While working tech stuff at the events, I listened to many speeches. Two of them stood out: Tom Brokaw’s speech (who I met by the way as he walked out of a building- not as cool as it sounds) and Government Professor Clay Clemens’ speech.
Clay Clemens really did a good job of capturing William and Mary from a student’s perspective- He hit most of the standard student gossip points, and definitely knew the typical student complaints. But I wasn’t impressed with his speech because of his ability to list popular student opinions (although I was impressed by his knowledge of both the drugs/alcohol scene and greek life, both seemed way too accurate to be publicly admitted by a faculty member) instead, I was disappointed that this was the first time I was hearing it.
Of everything I’ve read about William and Mary, rarely is any of it accurate. When I was doing my college research, I read all the typical BS. Even on college review sites written by ‘students’, the comments (supposedly posted by students themselves) were about academic merit, diversity, engaging student organizations, etc. I could go to any top American university and get plenty of those. Why didn’t these people tell me that 50% of my campus would be staying in to study on a saturday night? or that William and Mary is actually proud of its ridiculous statistics for the number of graduates it has that are still virgins, have never tasted alcohol, or basically never plan on taking a risk ever? When looking for statistics on William and Mary, I came across two very different versions:
1:
- “In October 2005, at a (William and Mary) Delta Delta Delta formal, drunken sorority girls careened through the host’s house, vomiting, falling, and breaking furnishings. One girl ran naked through a hallway; another was found half-naked with a male on the bed in the master suite. A third had intercourse with her escort in a different bedroom. On the bus back from the formal, she was seen kissing her escort; once she arrived home, she had sex with a different male.”
2:
- “The students study all the time. The curves are small because of the 5,000 people who dwell in the library. They go swemming (library) instead of swimming, reading instead of drinking, stress instead of sex, and mostly boring instead of risky. This is not the college experience, it is hell.”
- “Take the ten lamest kids form high school, multiply by 1000, and put them in colonial williamsburg. At william and mary, if given the option between keg party and wine bar, they choose quiet coffee house with a classic book, some flavored coffee, and an edgy pair of reading glasses, claiming they could be wild but why not be unique and tastefully unpredictable. And should you happen to stumble in drunk looking for a pee stop with your hookup, they glare at you or cry rape because they’re so smart they know whats about to happen.”
Unfortunately, I expected more of the first, and less of the rest. Not to say I don’t understand the need for hard work and responsibility, but I have the rest of my life to hit the “quiet coffee house with a classic book, some flavored coffee, and an edgy pair of reading glasses”. And once I’m done studying, I like to know there’s something fun to do. After all, those Sorority girls have like a 3.1+ average gpa, which is at or above the school average. Talk about work hard, play hard.
Lucky for me though, “Delta Delta Delta” is doing homecoming next year with- guess who? Lambo. Thats my frat.
Anyways, the point of this is, getting a real understanding of a school is not an easy thing to do. Clay’s speech was pretty good.
…this was supposed to be the point where I copied and pasted the speech …but I couldn’t find it, and this isn’t even the first year he’s spoken.
I’ll try and find it; so watch for that in another post.
Until then, though, I’ll talk about the opposite end of the spectrum.
I was at the government department’s graduation, where MR. BROKAW gave his first speech. I put that in all caps because he was very insistent (nonverbally at least) in showing his importance. He walked in at a random time, had them halt mid-walk for the seniors, gave a very generic speech, then immediately left. I happened to be at the door when he walked out, and had a quick greeting as he passed me. He was cordial, but everything about him and his entourage said we’re busy, and much too important for this. Even if its true, that’s negative points for you, MR. BROKAW.
Now, after that first speech, I was hardly interested in hearing his big one at commencement- a longer version of what I was already bored of? No thank you. But I was working etc, so I ended up with it anyways.
It was just as generic.
I don’t even need to say why- just look at this:
“In the last couple of years I’ve been a Class Day speaker at Harvard and Yale, and at those institutions I had to use shorter words and speak more slowly.” -Stanford, 2006
“I want to say at the outset, to the graduating class, it’s not only a privilege to be your commencement speaker here today, but it’s also a great relief because it dawned on me as I arrived that if I were speaking at UVA, I would have to speak much more slowly and use much shorter words.” -William and Mary, 2009
“it’s also a relief, because if I were giving these remarks at Columbia, I’d have to speak much more slowly and use shorter words for the class at Columbia. “-Fordham, 2009
“It is easy to make a buck. It’s tough to make a difference.”A Wall Street success, wrote to me suggesting a re-write. “It’s tough to make a buck,” he said, “but if you make lots of bucks, you can make a helluva difference.” -Providence, 2005
Then a parent at one of these commencements said to me, “I think there’s a re-wording: ‘It’s tough to make a buck, but if you make a lot of bucks, you can make a real difference.’ -William and Mary, 2009
“Then a parent suggested a re-wording: “It’s tough to make a buck but if you make a lot of bucks, you can make a real difference.” So for a time I offered both observations as a final word.” – Dartmouth, 2005
…As I was reading the Fordham speech, I noticed it was pretty similar to all the others. In fact, a quick check with an online text comparison website found: 2497 word(s), 185 unique word(s). 65.3% phrases match. In fact, pretty much every speech he has given since he retired in 2004 is the same.
I want Jon Stewart back:
“Lets talk about the real world for a moment. We had been discussing it earlier, and I…I wanted to bring this up to you earlier about the real world, and this is I guess as good a time as any. I don’t really know to put this, so I’ll be blunt. We broke it.
Please don’t be mad. I know we were supposed to bequeath to the next generation a world better than the one we were handed. So, sorry.
I don’t know if you’ve been following the news lately, but it just kinda got away from us. Somewhere between the gold rush of easy internet profits and an arrogant sense of endless empire, we heard kind of a pinging noise, and uh, then the damn thing just died on us. So I apologize.
But here’s the good news. You fix this thing, you’re the next greatest generation, people. You do this—and I believe you can—you win this war on terror, and Tom Brokaw’s kissing your ass from here to Tikrit, let me tell ya. And even if you don’t, you’re not gonna have much trouble surpassing my generation. If you end up getting your picture taken next to a naked guy pile of enemy prisoners and don’t give the thumbs up you’ve outdid us.”
Plus, he lived on the same freshman dorm as me- how cool is that?
-read the whole speech here: http://web.wm.edu/news/archive/index.php?id=3650
Popularity: 6% [?]
