Missing the point

A lot of negative attention – including a student petition 336 signatures strong calling for “a better, more transparent and more accountable commencement speaker selection committee to better reflect and respect the diverse opinions of the student body,” according to the article in today’s Cavalier Daily – has been focused on the political views of this year’s graduation commencement speaker: University alumnus and Charlottesville resident Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson. Many students look forward to fond memories of their graduation ceremony’s main event, but “selection” may not be the best word to describe the process of determining who the annual commencement speaker will be. Unfortunately, the speaker selection committee does not enjoy the same luxuries that the Office of Undergraduate Admissions does this time of year; a barrage of qualified, well-known candidates is not clamoring for the chance to serve the University community for no charge. Not that it isn’t a great honor to speak at the University’s graduation, but the elite speakers have other great options too. Finding a prestigious, worthy commencement speaker is no easy task for a college administration, and considering that the University does not pay its speakers it is hard to expect that they could have done much better in this respect. Whatever his political ideology may be, Wilkinson is an accomplished scholar that has a lot of noteworthy advice to offer graduating fourth-years. There are no guarantees, but one can easily be forgiven for assuming that Wilkinson’s speech will be tailored toward graduating college students rather than an account of his views on the war in Iraq. It is impossible to satisfy the “diverse opinions” of the three thousand plus members of the graduating class with merely one person. Can’t we set politics aside just once?