Gradsmake their voices heard — with a bullhorn

This has been an exciting year for commencements.

In Florida, graduates who tried to dance across the stage to receive their college diplomas were physically wrestled away by school offifficials. In California, the ceremonies at Pepperdine University were disrupted by a pair of swooping pelicans. One of them was described by Mashable as, “a giant beast of death.”

And in Kentucky, a high school’s valedictorian and student body president were forced to deliver their speeches outside the building last Friday. With a bullhorn. Christian Bales had intended to deliver his speech in the traditional manner: inside with a microphone.

But when school offifficials at Holy Cross high school in Covington previewed it, the principal and other offifficials told him the Diocese of Covington felt his speech was too angry and confrontational, he said.

In an offifficial statement, the Diocese said it was “found to contain elements that were political and inconsistent with the teaching of the Catholic Church.”

Katherine Frantz, the student body president, also was scheduled to speak, but her speech was deemed “too personal.”

So both speeches were rejected and the school had the programs reprinted to delete any reference to them.

Bales suspects there were other issues. He’s gay, although his speech made no mention of that. But the concern may have been about what he might wear under his robe. For the prom he wore high heels and a flfloral jumpsuit.

“I have been on their radar as a rather nongender conforming individual,” Bales said. “I have worn makeup and bobby pins in my hair to school before. So it seems too much of a coincidence for my critical thinking to think this was just about the speech itself. But I wasn’t going to go up there and give my speech in full drag.”

The speech itself touched on the shootings at Parkland, Holy Cross students’ participation in a March for Life Rally and included: “Throughout the past four years at Holy Cross, I’ve learned how to utilize my voice to advocate for my beliefs as an ethical individual. I’ve faced opposition in a number of scenarios, but my voice continued to grow in intensity as I faced more adversity. Rather than allowing opposition to silence us, we must utilize it as empowerment.”

When the offifficial ceremonies ended, Christian took his own advice. He and Katherine stood outside the convocation center and delivered their speeches to the departing crowd through a bullhorn. Which probably made the whole thing a lot more memorable than the usual commencement blah, blah, blah.

Still, it sort of makes you long for a time when the most controversial things that happened at commencements were graduates batting around beach balls and decorating each other with Silly String. And the biggest problem was staying awake during them, not worrying about incoming pelicans.