50 Comments
For those of you wondering how Speakergate ’07 played out, Chris Szabla took these notes under his blue gown during the speeches.
First, Fox called out a Spec quotee:
“Matthew Fox singled out Julia Kite for saying that she didn’t know who Fox was, and Prezbo followed with ‘Julia, I didn’t know who he was either,’ adding, ‘Don’t worry, he’s gone now.'”
And then things got political:
“When Quigley introduced Prezbo as being ‘farsighted with regard to the spatial planning needs of the university’ or something, people understood it as a reference to Manhattanville and started booing. Conversely, there were seemingly cheers whenever OMA was mentioned.”
And Quigley made a charming chronological faux pas:
“Also, Quigley called us ‘toddlers of the early 80s,’ (though most of us were born from 1984-6) then chatter ensued, at which point he looked up, thought a moment, and just continued. Recycled speech?”
Spec takes a more measured approach here.
UPDATE, 9:15 PM: In a surprising upset, SEAS Class Day speaker Santiago Calatrava disappointed. By one account, his accent was positively Havelesque, and the speech (“one long drone about public service”) dropped the phrase “challenges of engineering” about 10 times.
Also, the SEAS senior fund claims about 100% participation. CC got 83%. HOW DO THEY DO IT?
In other news, everyone’s favorite gay-basher just died.
Loading …
50 Comments
@BC'07 I just watched the video, and Fox did well. Too bad bwog didn’t cover the Barnard graduation though. Anna Deavere Smith did impersonations! (although, as should be expected, many speeches had a strong and almost obnoxious “Girl-Power” aspect)
@#13 is wrong The Wire, not Lost, is the best show on television
@DHI Well now I know.
@justjared http://justjared.buzznet.com/2007/05/15/matthew-fox-columbia-class-day
@squealy Congrats, Julia! Just here to add to the love.
@look! http://www.people.com/people/gallery/0,,20038970_4,00.html
@actually... the link you meant to post is this:
http://www.people.com/people/gallery/0,,20038970_11,00.html
@actually... people.com says Fox is a former alum…i guess they don’t have copy editors
@video? anyone have video of class day (of the speeches)? i was in france.
@X.J. http://www.columbia.edu/cu/ceremonies/commencement/docs/events/webcasts/index.html
@chait in the end we all have to stop ragging on prezbo, fox, and nick and unite around the fact that chait’s speech was by far the worst in that lineup.
@hmph the system is antiquated and fatally flawed. one day, universities will recognize that those students with the best grades (which almost always stem from fields in which the assignments are objectively scored) do not neccessarily make the best (or most appropriate) speakers. nick’s a great guy, but the past four years have hardly been generic for me, i see no reason why that should change on class day.
@quiqui Ugh, that should say “salutatorian.”
@quiqui Why hasn’t anyone commented on how much the salutorian’s speech sucked? At least where I was sitting, people were snickering during parts.
@falwell it certainly made my parents squirm during parts. it made our campus sound like it was run by racist bigots, and felt like it was meant to launch a PC crusade – or would have, if it wasn’t so monotone. I like nick, but yeah. it reflected the degree to which spec and all the “culture groups” really overplayed tiny little “bias incidents” that don’t speak for campus culture as a whole.
@Hah. Falwell’s obit has “Tinky Winky” on the first page. That’s as lovely a bit of karma as I’ve seen all year.
@Shallow Dear Columbia,
When in doubt, please get more pretty men to speak to me for eight minutes. Or just put them on stage for me to stare at longingly. Who needs distinguished careers when you have scruffy beards and soulful eyes.
Love,
Yes, I am that shallow.
@SEAS pwns again. Take that you finance whores!
@Anonymous I love this school.
@I love you Julia Kite.
@then why were you unwilling to donate a single dollar to it? BECAUSE YOU’RE A HYPOCRIT. julia spoke at the john jay award dinner (which brings in 1.2 million for financial aid) about how alums’ donations to columbia enabled her to travel to scotland or something and about how financial aid has made her life wonderful etc etc. and then when approached to give $1 to the senior fund refused…. if you don’t think financial aid is important, then don’t donate to the senior fund… but if you’re willing to get up in front of 800 people and talk about how your life has been bettered by the generosity of alums then why the hell not give $1? julia= the epitome of hypocrisy.
@yes i agree completely.
@don't tease me about Ann Coulter like that!!
@dude some people don’t watch Lost. chill out and deal with it. There are other shows (House, baseball/basketball, The Office) and other things to do with your life.
@yes of course, but it’s the fact that people take pride in not knowing. They think they’re “too important” (too good?) to know something like a television show. The great thing, however, is that there will be more cocktail, interview and business conversations about movies and tv than 17th century lit.
@Uh... hopefully better TV than “Lost.” “Lost” is the essence of stupid.
In fact, the post you’re replying to specifically mentions lots of things on TV. Pop culture != culture.
@rjt I’m not sure how I feel about pop culture not being equal to culture. What is culture today, then? Arthouse movements that affect and are noticed by less than 1% of the population?
@Well I didn’t mean that anything popular is bad, fun as it is to hold that opinion. But the segments of culture that are designed specifically for popular appeal, rather than some intrinsic artistic purpose (say, Britney Spears versus basically any band that writes its own songs), are basically just a sin.
I put Lost in this category, I mean, but it’s probably not unreasonable to disagree. But there’s a difference between culture and the culture industry.
@McFister Who is in the cast of “Lost” is of no consequence.
@CML What about Jeopardy and South Park! South Park = the best serialized social commentary since the days of Dickens.
@lost is the best show on TV. You have to be a pretentious ass not to know who he is…
@McFister Some people have interests other than television.
@And others lack the self-importance to believe that being interested in or watching television somehow precludes you from having other interests.
@Yeah I didn’t know who Matthew Fox was until the whole Speakergate thing.
@DHI There’s nothing pretentious about not knowing who’s in shows you don’t watch, and there’s nothing pretentious about not watching a particular show, especially a serial show that is pretty dependent on watching every episode from what I gather. I don’t get mad at people who don’t know the cast of 24, hell I’ve watched like 90 episodes and I don’t even know the name of David Palmer/Allstate commercial guy.
@... His name is Pedro Cerrano.
@Um, actually, The name of the actor who played President David Palmer on ‘24’ is Dennis Haysbert. As you mentioned, he currently can also be seen in those “That’s Allstate’s stand. Are you in good hands?” commercials, and in ‘The Unit’ on CBS. He had a role in Michael Mann’s 1995 classic, ‘Heat’.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0371660/
@i thought klagge’s speech was brave and honest. go nick.
@intolerable not quigley. columbo. that man is such a bore.
@fox was amazing. sorry to have doubted the man. the actual speech was excellent and his intro was just pure genius. my favorite part was the part where he compared himself to bill gates noting that “unlike mr. gates, i am actually a college graduate.”
bollinger’s quip was rude but fox was gone at that point as bollinger pointed out, and it was genuine. bollinger is oblivious to tons of shit and he just wanted to make that point. i found it hilarious. today’s winners were matt fox, julia kite, quigley and bollinger, pretty much in that order.
@huh? bollinger, a winner? were you there? he was rude and arrogant and seemed like he thought he had better places to be.
but also, considering his fall from greatness after his affirmative action stuff, i was not surprised.
and matthew fox: fabulous, and even better looking in person,
@I'm sorry you clearly are either a) biased against Bollinger or b) were not at the ceremony. Perhaps you’re just another columbia activist in desperate search of a cause.
Bollinger sounded like he needed to be somewhere else? Then why did he stay for the entire ceremony and shake every graduates hand? I don’t think he does that for every school ceremony.
And the Matthew Fox comment? If anything it was a little chivalrous in that he bailed out Julia after she was publicly called out in the middle of class day.
Grow up.
And for those of you knocking Nick? Yeah it was a little overdramatized, but guess what, so has nearly every speech ever delivered by a student. And Nick isn’t a finance striver, he is in fact a quantitative genius. So the speech was hackneyed- oh well. I think it was decent. Someone should have addressed the fact that nearly every year at Columbia is filled with turmoil and that MEANS something. I’m glad he did, and not some trite person.
Chait’s speech was standard cliched fare. Can’t expect much else.
And who asked Arvind Kadaba to follow up his class gift presentation with a speech and a half???
@why why is quigley so intollerable? fox was fine. woohoo ghostwriters.
@I thought Fox did a fantastic job. When he started out by listing all of the previous speakers, and quoted the spec…it was fabulous.
Quigley’s ‘puff puff, chug chug’ was the best moment ever.
@well I thought presbo’s quip about Fox was sort of rude.
Then again, I have a teenybopper crush on Matthew Fox.
@erjeqriq Julia, marry me. For real.
@pleasantly surprised As someone who was very skeptical about Fox, I was wrong, and he did a great job. Addressed everyone’s “wtf?” reaction to his selection at the start, getting it out of the way so he could give a heartfelt, meaningful speech that was actually about something.
Thumbs up!
@cc2007 fox killed. he was so self deprecating and made a truly enjoyable speech. my grandparents, afterward, who obviously had no idea who he was, couldnt stop saying that he was charming that that they couldnt imagine a better speech.
congrats 07!!
@hairs I thought Klagge did a nice job. Fox impressed me, although I thought his speech could have used some editing… the ad-libbed part where he talked about his job interview was a lot more fun to listen to than the repetitive stuff he seemed to have had written down.
Best moment, hands-down, was when Quigley quoted The Little Engine That Could.
@lskfslkf fox was positively charming, and his charisma inspiring. (who else was cringing after the dumbass jocks screamed “JACK!!!” for the 18th time?)
klagge’s speech really captured the ethos of the class of 2007 nicely. that is, it was a boring, uncreative, packaged rambling by a striving, diligent finance hopeful. perhaps they might have given lackner a chance to speak, possibly giving us a chance to hear the insights of a real genius.