Committee to include graduating seniors, executive officers
After student uproar at the relatively low-profile slate of May commencement speakers announced last week, USC is re-examining the process by which it selects its speakers.
Student input was the main subject of a Monday morning conference call among USC President Harris Pastides, board of trustees Secretary Amy Stone, Associate Vice President for Student Affairs Jerry Brewer and Student Government executive officials Kenny Tracy, Chase Mizzell and Coy Gibson. The group hopes to create a committee headed by these officials and including graduating seniors each year to give feedback on proposed speakers, Tracy said.
“There’s a need for input on the process,” Tracy said. “We’re trying to incorporate that more so in the future we can revert to that process and know what students would like to see out of their speakers.”
Pastides said last week that no student had ever approached him with suggestions on whom the university should invite to speak at graduation.
“In my four years as president I have never had even one recommendation from a student (but many from alumni and faculty) about a proposed commencement speaker,” Pastides wrote in an email Thursday morning. “Also, I have never had a negative comment from a student, after a commencement, about a speaker ... but certainly hundreds of positive ones, from students and family alike.”
Tracy said a collaboration between students and administrators would help add new perspective to the decision-making process.
He confirmed that USC had invited U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, but neither had accepted the university’s invitation to speak at the ceremonies next month. The May lineup is now set in stone and no other names are currently being considered, Tracy said, but he hopes that the new committee will be functional in time to have a say in the August commencement.
When asked how exactly input would be incorporated, Tracy was unsure and said that the current goal is to facilitate communication between students and the administration on the topic.
“Right now we just want to get everyone in the same room,” he said. “Right now we don’t know a lot about it.”
He said he hoped one of the main changes to the process would be a set criteria of what students would like to see from their graduation speakers, “not a shouting-out of names.”
“Students want someone famous with a lot of recognition,” Tracy said. “That’s good to some extent, but that’s not all a graduation speaker should be. To me, Snooki (of MTV’s “Jersey Shore”) would be a recognizable figure but not a graduation speaker. This year’s speakers are very established, they’ve accomplished a lot and that shouldn’t be taken from them. They’re a pretty good crop. But like other students, I think there’s room for improvement.”
Tracy encouraged students to be proactive and submit suggestions and ideas to him via email: sasgpres@mailbox.sc.edu.
“We’re looking for feedback,” he said. “If there’s constructive feedback, not just students lashing out, we’d look into bringing them into the discussions.”