As a recent graduate of the University of South Carolina, I read The Daily Gamecock often and have multiple conversations each week with friends I have left behind at Carolina.
Last year around this time, the administration announced what many of us considered a pretty impressive lineup of commencement speakers, including Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor and Jon Huntsman, who many suspected would later announce his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination. The university also announced that it would confer honorary degrees upon a number of folks, including the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, G. Bryant Wright, a man who some of us believed headed an organization that held beliefs that were antithetical to the Carolinian Creed, notably its vocal condemnation of homosexuals. What did we do?
Yes, we complained on Twitter and Facebook, but more importantly, we got active. We penned editorials to The Daily Gamecock, encouraged our friends to do the same and sent letters to President Pastides and members of the Board of Trustees. Within a week’s time, the Daily Gamecock had received more letters than it could print and alumni and others associated with the university called and emailed university officials to share their own displeasure with the decision to honor Wright. A few days later, my co-agitators and I received an email asking us if we would be willing to sit down for a conversation with Pastides, then Secretary of the Board of Trustees Thomas Stepp and Jerry Brewer, Associate Vice President of Student Affairs to discuss the matter face to face. The conversation was both respectful and frank and we made clear to the administration that students deserved a greater say in the process than the university had afforded us up to this point. While we would have preferred the university changed its mind in regard to Wright’s honorary degree, we were satisfied with President Pastides’ promise to make the process more transparent and more accessible to students at the University of South Carolina. He also assured us that never again would the university make such an important decision without thinking more about what students may think about the person who is honored by their university.
Clearly, more needs to be done to make this process more student-centered than it currently is. In my opinion, the Commencement Committee should be led by students who are assisted by “adults” who remind them of budgetary constraints and ensure that commencement ceremonies are conducted “decently and in order.” If students agree, they should get up from their comfortable desk chairs and abandon the anonymity of the internet.
Speak up. Get active. President Pastides is a great leader who cares deeply about the students he serves. He is willing to listen and will take your concerns seriously. You cannot expect him to listen to you, however, if you only speak in 140 characters or less and use language that makes all of us question whether you should be allowed to receive a degree from the university in the first place.
— Hakeem Jefferson, 2011 USC political science and African American studies graduate