Roger Weber | Same old song and stance

Roughly 8,000 hours from now, I will be graduating.

I will be leaving Penn with a bevy of experiences, a slightly different outlook and an Ivy League education - things that will, I hope, guide me well both in life and in this uncertain job market. Yet, despite all of this uncertainty, I am sure of one thing: whoever turns up as our graduation speaker next year will not influence my life that much.

As Penn students, I believe we are fully capable of hunting down inspiration when we need it without the guidance of Amy Gutmann's esteemed panels. However, as another graduation season comes to an end, I still can't help but feel a little disturbed by the continued lack of conservatives making the graduation lecture circuit.

In truth, graduation speakers are largely symbolic - figures which universities use as a reflection on what they project their own graduates to accomplish. It's also a chance for universities to legitimize themselves to the rest of the nation by winning the time and esteem of an important and influential person. After all, the selection of a prominent graduation speaker is one of the only chances (other than a criminal offense) for a school like Penn to garner national media attention.

After a politically charged school year, one might have thought universities would be clamoring for hard-hitting big names - even conservative ones. There's definitely no shortage of influential Republicans out there. And after last year's election there are plenty of well-known conservative politicians (or, in some cases, former politicians) out of work with plenty of time on their hands.

Once again, though, many of the nation's prominent schools have settled for lightweight (albeit hip) liberals. Harvard and Princeton chose left-leaning TV personalities, Matt Lauer and Katie Couric. Dartmouth chose notorious left-wing donor and author Louise Eldrich, while Brown relied on its own students to speak. And Penn settled for Google CEO Eric Schmidt, the same person Carnegie Mellon chose.

Nothing against those figures - and not to say they don't have a prominent place in today's world, especially the Google guy - but as far as interesting big names go, are these really top of the line? I mean, intellectually speaking?

Do we really think Matt Lauer could offer Harvard graduates more profound nuggets of advice than a Bush, Cheney, or McCain-type figure? Even in his own field, I'd argue he doesn't hold nearly the clout as any number of conservative leaners. Dare I even mention Rush Limbaugh?

Yet the Young America's Foundation could point to only five "barely recognizable" conservatives who spoke at graduation podiums this spring. Only two were active politicians.

I realize that at Penn, a school where 81 percent of students polled said they were voting for Obama this past November, bringing in a conservative to speak might draw some disgruntled faces. And I'm not saying that graduation is the time to bring in a controversial speaker simply for the fact that they are controversial. But for the University's, and the graduates' sake, shouldn't the speaker be someone prominent? Someone who's actually done something impressive with their education, regardless of their political viewpoint?

Furthermore, at schools where tolerance and diversity are an ingrained credo, it strikes me as odd that there is such a lack of diversity in perspectives.

Anyone in my class surely remembers the outcry concerning James Baker's selection for the 2007 commencement cermeony. Baker's conservative stances weren't in line with those of many graduating political science majors, but as Bush's White House chief-of-staff, his significance in terms of both what he said to the graduates and the attention he brought the school made him an interesting and noteworthy choice.

I've seen the other side of this debate too. Four years ago my small high school in Cincinnati, Ohio selected one of its most accomplished graduates - Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius - to speak as the Class of 2005 departed for college. Alumni outcry over her pro-abortion stances, however, caused the school to retract the offer weeks after her announcement made headlines across the city. The dis-invitation was a PR nightmare. Only within the jaded confines of the highly religious board of trustees did it seem like a sensible thing to do.

The same goes for schools like Penn. Among the liberals on a college campus it might seem perfectly logical to choose a liberal, non-influential actor or comedian over a much more intellectually accomplished conservative. But when that choice pops up in a news blurb somewhere else in the country, I don't think it says much for the school's academic reputation. And, if we truly are interested in attracting the diversity of a vast and interesting country, believe me, that reputation is important.

Roger Weber is a rising College senior from Cincinnati. His e-mail address is weber@dailypennsylvanian.com.

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