Commencement alternative turningvoices into 'thunder'
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No Comments [ Add Comment ]By Alan Choate
Daily Herald
S
everal hundred people attended a Thursday night alternative Brigham Young University graduation ceremony, an event that offered a raucously political contrast to the more staid official ceremony earlier in the day.
Two dozen BYU students raised $26,000 in nine days to pay for the ceremony and organized every detail, from reserving the McKay Events Center at Utah Valley State College to arranging the speaking lineup -- former Democratic U.S. Senate
candidate Pete Ashdown, ex-Amnesty International director Jack Healey and consumer advocate Ralph Nader.
"I am overwhelmed," organizer and graduating senior Eric Bybee said as the commencement started. "We are overwhelmed and grateful that so many have showed up."
All of the speakers offered a sharp critique of the policies -- including the Iraq war and the treatment of people detained as "enemy combatants" -- pursued by President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Cheney spoke at BYU's commencement earlier in the day.
But students were also urged to take heart that the alternative event even took place and to keep that energy alive as they went out into the world.
"This gathering is more than a response," said Ashdown, who unsuccessfully challenged U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, in last year's elections. "This gathering is the future."
And Healey, after telling stories of human rights abuses abroad, said everyone has a duty to seek improvements in the world.
"Take your voices and turn them into thunder," Healey said. "Take your candle and turn it into a bonfire -- and revive this nation to who we say we are!"
Organizer Ashley Sanders, who is also graduating, said she felt strongly that an alternative set of voices needed to be offered.
"People should have to give reasons for the things that they do," she said. "If BYU should have to defend its decision to invite Dick Cheney, Dick Cheney should speak, but we should also be able to respond.
"When people have to give reasons for their opposition and reasons for their support of something, then we're better people as a civic society."
At a news conference before the ceremony, Nader said the uncontroversial nature of Cheney's speech indicates the administration is feeling the heat of an unpopular war and increasingly tough scrutiny by Congress.
"He avoided a political speech, and I think that was sending a message right there," Nader said. "You can wave the flag and surround a deadly, boomeranging war with patriotic symbols. He could've done that.
"I think they know that the country is turning against them. ... I think they're hunkering down in the White House. I think they cannot believe what's happened to them."
Though the alternative event took place at UVSC, it was not affiliated with UVSC.
UVSC's commencement is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. today in the McKay Events Center.
It will feature Kevin B. Rollins, the former CEO of Dell Inc.
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