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OSU President Burns Hargis said during his meeting with the O’Collegian Editorial Board on Thursday that he wants to improve commencement exercises.
We’re not quite sure what he’s talking about.
We all enjoy watching thousands of strangers shake hands with important people we’ve never met.
And everyone loves a good graduation speaker. We’re sure everyone vividly remembers what Gov. Brad Henry and Lt. Gov. Jari Askins said last year.
Right.
After Hargis left, we sat and brainstormed exactly how you could make graduation more than a three-hour nap where you wake up to send text messages to the person sitting next to you.
First, a different kind of graduation speaker. Since Orange Peel no longer brings a comedian to campus, why not graduation?
The point of the graduation speaker shouldn’t be to teach us something — we’ve been learning for the past four years. Give us a laugh. We’ll enter the real world soon afterward where joy is limited.
For example, Seth MacFarlane, the creator of the popular comedy Family Guy, has spoke at graduations at Harvard University, George Washington University and the University of Texas, among others.
Secondly, Hargis said one idea he had was to maybe break the larger ceremony down into smaller settings, maybe split it up among colleges.
We like the idea of decreasing the amount of mispronounced names we have to hear.
The College of Arts & Sciences, the largest college, would still have a huge ceremony, but it would be less huge than the 3,000 students at the typical graduation.
Hargis said the main problem with having smaller ceremonies is that there aren’t indoor locations on campus that would cater to this idea.
If Mother Nature behaved herself, we wouldn’t have to worry about rain.
The suggestion of renting circus tents came up while we were talking, but only if randomly selected students had to jump through flaming hoops to get their diplomas.
The only solution we could think of was to have the graduations in sections of Gallagher-Iba Arena at different times.
We are a board of only seven students.
If the other 20,000 of you would like to suggest how to improve graduation, feel free to let us know at letters@ocolly.com.
—The O’Collegian Editorial Board
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