Ara Shirinian: Students need a voice in commencement speaker decisions

Admittedly an awful choice of commencement speaker, but perhaps among the five least important matters in a student's career. It's less important than students having a say in the dining hall's choice of salad dressings, for example; I remember the ranch dressing with perhaps inordinate fondness, but I have no idea who my commencement speaker was.

My school picked a student's name out of a hat and chose him as commencement speaker. Not a particularly inspiring speech, but at least not someone bad.

I also got a 128 MB flash drive as a gift. This was in 2013.

FWIW, I think Nathan will make a fascinating commencement speaker. He gets a lot of flak (rightfully) for Intellectual Ventures but he has a lot of success in multiple unrelated fields (cooking! archaeology! Microsoft).

> The class of 2015 […] should be given a speaker who can represent the true values of UCLA.

Maybe that’s what they did get, and the values of UCLA are not what you thought they were.

Maybe they can use their voice to boo him off the stage.

Future students have a choice, and a voice; judge an institution by the way it conducts itself. Go somewhere cool.