I was extremely disturbed by GW President Stephen Joel Trachtenberg’s comments in the April 26 Hatchet article “Speaker lineup disappoints” (p. 1). He must have little faith in the education GW provides because his comments make me ask, “How stupid does he think we are?”
Excuses like “we decided long ago that we were going to have a panel of speakers” or “we did it because it was an election year,” do little to quell my displeasure with GW’s choice of Commencement speakers. It seems that in conversations that myself or my friends have had with the likes of President Trachtenberg or University Marshal Jill Kasle, the panel of speakers decision never came up when asked about graduation speakers. At an alumni event in Miami in January, Trachtenberg mentioned Tony Bennett as the singer of the national anthem, not as the highlight of a lackluster group of speakers.
When Trachtenberg claims “most universities across the country would kill for a list of speakers like the ones we have gotten,” I beg to differ. First, we are not like most of the schools in America; we are better. If anybody should be advocating that, it should be President Trachtenberg. We are better than most of the schools in the United States, and we expect better – in our education, our president and our Commencement speakers. Second, I doubt that the worst school in America would be jumping for joy in anticipation of hearing Charlene Drew Jarvis or H.R. Shepard, inventor of the asthma inhaler.
As a person recruited on the slogans, “Something happens here” and “In the center of it all,” I have been fortunate enough to witness the truths in those statements. Yet after seeing the likes of Bob Dole, President Clinton, Desmond Tutu and Colin Powell speak at GW, it is a shame that the final speaker I will witness will be a Las Vegas crooner whose most famous song, “I left my heart in San Francisco,” was made nearly 20 years before I was born. I wonder if that is what he is going to speak about – how to write a hit song 40 years ago. It seems as though Trachtenberg has forgotten we are at “the center of it all.” There are plenty of politicians and political talking heads nearby that would easily satisfy students. It is what we expect, what we have gotten for nearly the past decade, what clearly lacks this year.
Marshal Kasle keenly observed that the powers that be “decided to have speakers from a wide range of areas that are too often looked over.” Perhaps in trying to understand our disappointment, Marshal Kasle and President Trachtenberg should try and understand why those speakers are normally “looked over.” What President Trachtenberg fails to realize is that although he thinks our speakers are nice, it is not his opinion that matters. This is our Commencement, not his. Despite what he thinks of the speakers, the Class of 2001 is clearly not happy. He should call in some of the political chits he has gathered during his years of service here and get us a speaker the graduates will be proud of.
-Sam Giller
senior
