This is from Lloyd Douglas’s essay, “A Truthful Commencement Address,” published in the June 1919 issue of The Intercollegian, put out by the YMCA. The full title is, “A Truthful Commencement Address (As It Might Be Delivered by the President of Any College).”
“My Dear Young Friends — or perhaps I had better say, Young Ladies and Gentlemen, for during your four years’ residence here I have been unable to become acquainted with you, having been required to be absent almost constantly, shaking down wealthy alumni and supplicating the state legislature for the wherewithal to pay salaries to your dearly beloved instructors.
“You have now arrived at an epochal hour in your lives — or what would be that, if so many of you were not contemplating post-graduate work which will keep you in the rah-rah for another three to five years. The few of you who do step forth today to grapple with life — or, more strictly speaking, who are all packed up to go home for the summer — might be felicitated upon the triumphal termination to your college career, were it not for the well-known fact that fully seven-ninths of you have been working only for credits, electing the pipes and snaps, and just skinning through with an oh-be-thankful average of C flat.
“I have it from your instructors that some of you are graduating by a very narrow squeak. They tell me that a considerable number of you never did fire on more than two cylinders; and that some of your batteries need renewing, even before you start on the journey of life, due to hard driving on your joy rides.
“Honestly, it makes me laugh when I see you sitting there, looking so solemn and wise, squinting up at me through your black tassels and wondering how far your rented gown misses connections with the back of your collar — for I saw your marks at the Registrar’s office; and, say, they were some grades!
“Doubtless you hope that I will say something about your painful ascent of the Mount of Wisdom — which only three or four of you took on high — for the benefit of your pa and ma who are admiring the top of your mortar-board from the balcony; but I am afraid to attempt it, for fear some of the faculty may grin and give the whole thing away. That being the case, let us approach the matter with friendly frankness — and tell the truth.
“You came here, four years ago, flushed with enthusiasm to become educated men and women. You had bright dreams of fitting yourselves for eminent service to society. The sophisticated upperclassmen had that all shamed out of you by the first Thanksgiving. The little handful of you who did contrive to retain your youthful visions were hectored and badgered and chaffed throughout your course by a bunch of roughnecks, many of whom will not be able to buy, borrow, or bank ten years from now unless they inherit something that can be doled out to them in the form of a pension. The majority of you settled down early to the belief that the faculty was your common enemy and that the big fight of your lives was to avoid seeming to take a personal interest in your studies, lest you should become an object of ridicule among your mates.
“You missed the lectures by eminent men, which we provided for you at considerable expense, and went to the movies instead, to see the man with the big hat and the leather pants rescue the heiress to all of Fifth Avenue from Madison Square to Seventy-Second Street from the clutches of Desperate Mike, in a log hut at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.
“On the night of the orchestral concert which we brought on for your delectation to play the music of the masters, you had a dance — the music being furnished by two snare drums, a tin whistle, a pair of cymbals, a cowbell, a pistol, a couple of wooden blocks covered with sandpaper, the whole accompanied by a boy with a fatuous grin who beat the time by bouncing himself up and down on the piano bench. Again, when we enticed one of the foremost American artists to come here with his exhibition, you held another dance which was announced as ‘Strictly Modern’ — so modern, indeed, that some of the chaperones left before it was out.
“I have it on pretty good authority that some of you young gentlemen who are going out to lead in the great constructive movements of our day — pardon my smiling — used to get yourselves excused early from the seven-to-nine P.M. sociology seminar, where you were discussing the best processes of redeeming our degraded social order and setting to rights a badly befogged civilization, so that you might attend a vaudeville in which the chief bill featured a group of tired, underfed, underpaid girls who danced to the tune of ‘By the Moon, I Spoon,’ and coughed, between verses, to the tune of T. B., which was followed by a brief skit in which a trained monkey appeared and smoked a cigarette. This latter act must have been tame stuff, however, since one need not spend one’s good money to see such things.
“Well, here you all are; still young enough to make good, even if you have thrown away a chance you’ll never have again. Some of you possess a glimmer of genius which you can cash in, provided you don’t bank too heavily on what your family thinks you have found here on this campus. Don’t let any of our Commencement felicitations fool you too much about the real value of your college training, for mighty few of you have got anything worth all the fuss we are making over you.
“If you should care to come back about twenty years from today to attend the reunion of your class, it may interest you to see us pass out a generous chunk of the alphabet to some of your classmates who were hooted as ‘greasy grinds’ and ‘moles’ because they kept at their jobs while you went to see the trained monkeys, a sight you might have had any morning while shaving, except, possibly, for the adjective.
“And now, we bid you farewell; knowing that you would like to get loose and have a little walk with Flossie before the 3:15 train which carries you back to Jonesville, and Susie, who wears the Itta Bitta fraternity badge and has promised to share your fortunes when they are divisible by two.
“Don’t be depressed because it’s too late to mend the job you’ve foozled. Buck up, and play the game! A lot of people just like you, who trifled away their chances to learn something in college, have managed to put it over by imitating other people who had learned something. If you want to do a really constructive piece of service before you leave us, write a brief confession of the manner in which you bungled your job, seal it, and deposit it with us, to be handed to your own boy when he arrives here for college training. Maybe it will help to keep him steady; for, unless a new crop of youngsters comes along pretty soon with more interest in the real business of college life than you evinced, the whole thing will get to be a joke.
“Kindly step to the platform now and get your diplomas. We have printed your names on them in English so you might have no trouble identifying your own. As for the rest of it, we have prepared it in Latin. Few of you will ever know just what it says; but — no matter.
“We are sorry to see you leave. We would not be sorry if we thought the next outfit that comes along would be any more diligent. In that case, we should speed you on your way with an almost unseemly hilarity. But we know that you have set an example for your juniors which will make them as nearly like you as peas in a pod.
“Go out in the world, then; and, after five years of hard knocks, do create some new sentiment about college life! For we want to keep old alma mater going — and we can’t, very well, unless there is a change of attitude on the part of our constituency toward the real business of higher education!”
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