You may or may not be aware that the Wesleyan Student Assembly (WSA) is proposing a resolution that, if it should pass, would grant complete responsibility of selecting our student graduation speaker to a committee made up of senior class officials, faculty, and WSA members. You may or may not be aware that presently and in the past, our student speaker is selected by the student body, democratically, when we vote for our class president. Why, then, is the WSA and administration attempting to overturn such an old University tradition? The reasoning behind the resolution is that students are unaware that they are selecting their student graduation speaker as they vote for their senior class president. This argument is fundamentally illogical, especially in light of the WSA/administration’s current treatment of the issue.
First, the claim that students are unaware that they are choosing their graduation speaker hinges on the notion that students SHOULD be aware of who will be speaking for their class come graduation; but the WSA’s solution to this problem would be to further obscure the selection process. Have you received any e-mails or notifications that this resolution was proposed, or that this tradition is being contested? Will we receive any say in the matter? No. It is both a surreptitious and hypocritical move by the WSA to conceal this issue from the student body, and an attempt to undermine a democratically selective process, while justifying it with the false notion that students are not given adequate information concerning the issue.
Second, if the WSA is so concerned that the student body should be aware that they are voting for their speaker when they vote for their president, why doesn’t the resolution simply insist that these details be highlighted during the selection process? Finally, ask yourself: were you aware that your student class president is going to be your graduation speaker when you were voting, class of ’09? I was, and it was absolutely an issue in deciding my vote. If you did not know, then maybe you will agree with the resolution; but I find it hard to believe that any student here would voluntarily relinquish his/her responsibility in this matter.
The resolution includes an amendment that would have it go into effect this very year, which means that the current senior class president, Ravid Chowdhury, would lose his privilege to speak. The rationale behind this amendment is the weak notion that if they have created a better system for choosing a speaker, it should go into effect immediately. Please let the WSA know that this is completely unacceptable.
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