May 5, 2019
May is a season of commencements. In May, we mark the rite of passage known as Decision Day, when thousands of high school seniors proclaim which college or university they have chosen as the place to embark on the first leg of their fledgling journey into adulthood. It is also the season of college commencements, when thousands of hopeful young people don identical polyester robes and mortar boards to mark the successful completion of a degree, eager to embark on their next chapter; young adults launched into jobs or graduate programs.
Graduation speakers exhort them to dream big, to change the world, to pursue passion rather than wealth, blithely oblivious to the nature of the world that we are bequeathing them. Many students enter adulthood burdened by crushing debt loads at 22. Forty four million people owe a collective $1.5 trillion in student loan debt. The average graduate of the class of 2016 has an average of $37,000 in student loan debt, (Source: “Student Loan Debt Statistics in 2018: A $1.5 Trillion Dollar Crisis,” by Zack Friedman, Forbes.com, 6/13/18), and we foolishly wonder why they aren’t settling down, or even making time for sex. In addition, nearly half of undergraduates at public colleges and universities are grappling with food insecurity, (Source: “Tuition or Dinner? Nearly Half of College Students Surveyed in a New Report Are Going Hungry,” by Kaya Laterman, The New York Times, 5/2/19).
Given the news this week, the hungry and the indebted grads are the lucky ones. Because too many politicians care more about preserving the right of angry white men to own weapons of war, some, like hero Riley Howell, will not live to see graduation. Howell was the 21 year old who tackled the gunman in his UNC Charlotte classroom this past week, giving his own life in order to save others, ( Source: “UNC Charlotte Student Couldn’t Run, So He Tackled the Gunman,” by David Perlmutt and Julie Terkewitz, The New York Times, 5/1/19).
Maybe, in light of the country we’re in the process of handing over to them— one riven by white supremacist racial animus at the highest levels of government; one ravaged by climate change that the “responsible” adults have been too feckless to tackle; one with an economy that relentlessly sorts its citizens into winners and losers, and erects ever more obstacles to keep folks from the winners’ column, this year’s commencement speakers might consider offering this year’s graduates an apology, rather than the usual cliched nostrums.
They could offer the Class of 2019 an apology for turning the childhoods of the privileged among them into a joyless death march towards the holy grail of admission into a top school, then acting surprised when those kids become either anxious and depressed people incapable of taking risks, or uncaring jerks who care only about money and prestige. They could apologize to the middle class kids of every race for siphoning funding from their public colleges and universities, so that they had no option but to load up on debt to obtain a college education; forcing them to pick “safe” pre-professional majors to be sure they could pay for those degrees. They could apologize for treating the poor Black and Brown kids like disposable collateral damage, consigning them to crumbling schools staffed by the least experienced teachers, such that few of them are even prepared for college. This year’s commencement speakers should offer those apologies on behalf of all Baby Boomers and Gen Xers who created, or at a minimum, passively accepted, this unbearable status quo. Perhaps after the last strains of “Pomp and Circumstance” die down, the rest of us could make a pledge to spend the rest of our days trying to undo the damage we’ve wrought. It is the least we owe our children.