Who Will Teach the Commencement Speaker?

Today I attended the Vassar College commencement, to observe the graduation of my niece, Caroline (Cari) Adele Leonard.  The commencement speaker was Dr. Matthew C. Spitzer, a medical doctor and president of the U.S. chapter of Doctors Without Borders, an organization that rushes health care assistance to trouble spots around the world. 

Dr. Spitzer is an impressive individual, with an interesting resume, an extraordinary record of service, and important experiences to share.  But as a commencement speaker today he was a real flop.  I imagine that it would be the rare medical doctor who would be an ideal public speaker, since their education is devoted to other things than public speaking.  But if somebody from a profession that does not normally include lots of public speaking is recruited to give a commencement address, somebody from the inviting institution would do well to offer some guidance and assistance to avoid the kind of scene we had today.

The commencement was taking place outdoors.  Despite a dodgy weather prediction, it ended up being sunny and hot.  The commencement speaker was placed well along in the ceremony, after the seniors, administrators and faculty had paraded in and there had already been 4 speeches.  People were hot and parched.  And Dr. Spitzer droned on for more than half an hour with a speech that seemed like a collection of anecdotes and truisms without any overall structure or theme.  Many of the individual vignettes were interesting, and I'm sure there were points he could make that would be valuable for the graduating class.  But the speech he gave was hard to follow, not well enough organized to be effective, and full of trivial side-excursions to try the patience of the listeners.  Among the people with whom I spoke afterward, almost everyone was asking "what was the point of that?"

This is not to detract from Dr. Spitzer's accomplishments, or the valuable work that his organization does.  I have been a donor for many years and intend to continue being a donor.  But anybody who invited Spitzer to speak at a graduation ceremony should exercise some common sense and help him out with putting together a well-structured speech of appropriate length.

Comments

[Ruby]

You hit the nail on the head!! Amen...
Where was the inspiration for young people to do good work (as he obviously does)? We listened to a laundry list of every medical procedure he's done for poor people. This wasn't a status report. It was dreadful.