Bush heckled by his Alma Mater graduating class

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Bush Reconciles With Alma Mater (washingtonpost.com)

It should read "Bush heckled by his Alma Mater graduating class" By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 21, 2001; 5:36 PM

NEW HAVEN, Conn., May 21 – Today, for the first time since George W. Bush entered the national stage – really for the first time since he left college in 1968 – he let his old Yale ties show.

"I'm a better man because of Yale," Bush told several thousand new graduates as he received an honorary degree at Yale's 300th commencement. "Yale for me is a source of great pride. I hope that there will come a time for you to return to Yale to say that, and feel as I do today. And I hope you won't wait as long."

For the man from Midland, who suppressed his Eastern Establishment background when he went into politics, it was a gesture of reconciliation. But as Bush made peace with his Ivy League roots, many of the Yale graduates were not so gracious.

As Bush, in blue academic robes, accepted his award and rose to speak, the graduates raised a sea of yellow protest signs with slogans such as "Conservation, not Consumption," and "Execute Justice, not People." Students booed, hissed and heckled the president, and a couple of protesters turned their backs on him, made gagging sounds or shouted "Go away!"

Students in the audience from the School of Environmental Studies wore model power plants on their mortar boards, burning incense through miniature smokestacks. Scott Hedges, whose power-plant graduation cap even had a toy coal car, joked that "emissions requirements were waived" for his polluting cap under Bush's new energy policy.

More than 170 Yale professors boycotted the ceremony because they said Bush was not worthy of his honorary degree. Students wore stickers declaring "Got Arsenic?" and "5-4," a reference to the Supreme Court decision that essentially handed Bush the presidency. A banner flying from a dorm room portrayed Bush as Mad Magazine's Alfred E. Neuman wearing a pin that said "Worry."

The angry reaction to a GOP president was no surprise on a liberal campus where Bush lost last fall's presidential vote by 2 percentage points – to Ralph Nader (a fact Bush noted in his address). His 16 percent showing put him 49 points behind Al Gore.

Students in Bush's own Davenport College, which now claims his daughter Barbara, showed no support for the famous alumnus. "The sentiment in Davenport is definitely against Bush," said Will Durbin, a graduating senior passing out protest signs. Surely there's a Bush supporter in the group. Durbin looked around. "I don't see one," he said.

Even Delta Kappa Epsilon, Bush's Yale fraternity, did little to boost its brother. There was a Bush-Cheney sign in the front door of the Victorian frat house on Lake Place, with beer floats hanging outside and empty Miller Lite cups on the porch – but only one person at home. "I'm in a hurry to get ready," said Michael Buck, answering the door as he put on his tie for commencement. Isn't DKE showing support for Bush today? "Well, we're not rallying against him," Buck said.

Bush disarmed his critics, or a few of them, with a self-deprecating speech about his lazy college years. "To those of you who received honors, awards and distinctions, I say well done," went the president's set-up line. "And to the C students, I say, you, too, can be president of the United States." In a reference to Vice President Cheney, a Yale dropout, Bush continued: "So now we know: If you graduate from Yale, you become president. If you drop out, you get to be vice president."

The president joked about studying in the library with his Yale classmate, Richard Brodhead, now dean of Yale College. "We had a mutual understanding – Dick wouldn't read aloud, and I wouldn't snore," Bush said. As for his partying, Bush told the graduates: "If you're like me, you won't remember everything you did here."

He also made mirth of his oft-noted struggles with spoken English. When he enrolled in a Japanese haiku course, Bush recalled that an adviser "said I should focus on English. I still hear that quite often. But my critics don't realize I don't make verbal gaffes. I'm speaking in the perfect forms and rhythms of ancient haiku." Lest Yalies pillory their president's linguistics, Bush added: "I want the entire world to know this – everything I know about the spoken word, I learned right here at Yale."

The president had the bad luck of following to Yale this weekend newly minted Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), a Yale Law graduate and liberal icon. Clinton was warmly embraced by the graduates for a speech that pressed all the liberal buttons: women's rights, children, the environment, health insurance, AIDS, Americorps, the Peace Corps and humanitarian assistance. Her "dare to care" speech drew a standing ovation.

While the university's administration chose Bush to speak at commencement, the students themselves chose Clinton to speak the day before, on Class Day.

The issue of "slights" almost always comes up in recent coverage of the Bush family and Yale. The younger President Bush has complained that in the 1960s, then Yale chaplain William Sloane Coffin disparaged his father. He was angered that his father didn't get an honorary degree until the third year of his presidency, and he has resisted going to reunions or responding to fundraising appeals. Somebody reciprocated by leaking his less-than-stellar transcript.

Richard Levin, the Yale president, has worked hard to woo the Bushes. He hosted the first couple at his home last night, the same block where Bush lived as an infant while his father was a Yale student. The Levins earlier spent a night at the White House, and Levin invited Bush to speak at Yale's commencement – a rare honor for a recipient of an honorary degree, given only to sitting presidents.

Bush, now that his daughter Barbara has finished her freshman year, has obviously come around. Bush's father came back to campus recently to speak. Today, Bush was honored with Sam Waterston '62, an actor active in liberal causes, and Robert E. Rubin, President Clinton's Treasury secretary, and former Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo, along with luminaries from the arts and sciences.

"I'm not sure I remembered to thank them the last time I was here, but now that I have a second chance," Bush said, "I thank the professors of Yale University. That's how I've come to feel about the Yale experience – grateful."

The program included a glowing tribute to Bush. "His ability to reach out to others was evident even in his early years at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts: He institutionalized the informal campus games of stickball," it said. "Conducting a focused and hard-fought presidential campaign, Bush made the theme of 'compassionate conservatism' his watchword."

Some students heckled and laughed as Levin praised the Bush family and spoke of the president's "inclusiveness." But Bush softened the hostility with his brief speech, balanced between humor and reflection.

"When I left here, I didn't have much in the way of a life plan," he acknowledged. "Life takes its own turns and makes its own demands, writes its own story. And along the way, we start to realize we are not the author," he added. "We begin to understand that life is ours to live, but not to waste."

There were still boos and yellow protest signs when Bush finished – but not as many. Yale junior Jacob Remes, one of the protest organizers, pronounced the speech "depressing." But he admitted that Bush won over some critics. "I think people were sort of tickled," Remes said.

© 2001 The Washington Post Company



-- Cherri (jessam5@home.com), May 21, 2001

Answers

The Whiffenpoof Song

To the tables down at Morey's

To the place where Louis dwells To the dear old temple bar we love so well . . . Sing the Whiffenpoofs assembled With their glasses raised on high,

And the magic of their singing cast it's spell . . .

------------------ Yes, the magic of their singing,

Of the songs we love so well, Shall lie wasting and Mavourneen and the rest, We will serenade our Louis! ( We will serenade our Louis! ) While life and voice shall last! Then we'll pass and be forgotten like the rest . . .

----------------------- We're poor little lambs Who have lost our way

Baa Baa Baa!

We're little black sheep

Who have gone astray Baa Baa Baa!

---------------

Gentlemen songsters off on a spree

( Doomed . . . ) Doomed from here to eternity

( Lord . . . ) Lord, have mercy on such as we

Baa Baa Baa! Music by Tod B. Galloway and lyrics by Meade Minnigerode with George S. Pomeroy, 1909, 1936 Notes: ~ the song originated with a branch of the Yale University Glee Club who called themselves "The Whiffenpoof Society." The name was derived from an imaginary character in Victor Herbert's "Little Nemo." The lyrics of the song are from Rudyard Kipling's poem "Gentlemen Bankers." Rudy Vallee, who attended Yale and the Class of '27, performed the song on radio and records in 1936 and it became a major hit. It was sung in the Air Force film "Winged Victory" 1944.

-- Lars (larsguy@yahoo.com), May 21, 2001.


Sounds to me like President Bush was able to rise above the sniveling hecklers and win many of them over. These students have yet to really live a real life and demonstrate their own abilities to make a difference in this world.

How about you Cherri?

You seem to be one of life’s bitter losers, relegating yourself to ‘heckling’ those that are contributing to the quality of our existence. You may have given up on yourself but don’t you have any family or friends to focus on?

You are to be pitied, and believe me you are.

-- Lay Down (on@the.couch), May 21, 2001.


Lay down, More than 170 Yale professors boycotted the ceremony because they said Bush was not worthy of his honorary degree.They have lived life.

-- Cherri (jessam5@home.com), May 21, 2001.

yeah, but they don't spend a signigicant amount of their time posting ridiculous tripe to the internet bashing Bush.

-- ain't and cherri (trolls@ofDifferent.stripes), May 22, 2001.

Show me any time in history when college students embraced the political status quo. They'll get over it when they graduate and start looking for a job. Been so. Will ever be so.

-- Carlos (riffraff@cybertime.net), May 22, 2001.


So it is written, so it shall be.

-- So (cr@t.es), May 22, 2001.

Hey, Dumbya has had everything good in life handed to him on a silver platter without ever doing anything to earn it. Why should it be any different for an honorary laws degree?

Can't blame the other 200 professors for boycotting though, they actually had to work for theirs.

-- (Dumbya is @ spoiled. frat brat), May 22, 2001.


Since when did these professors work for "theirs". If you've ever been to college you'd know that graduate assistants actually teach the classes.

-- libs are idiots (moreinterpretation@ugly.com), May 22, 2001.

Perhaps the most amusing line I have read in months on this forum: "The Yale professors have lived life." My only conclusion, Cherri, is that you have never stepped foot on a college campus nor spoken with a college professor.

-- Remember (the@ld.forum.com), May 22, 2001.

"Since when did these professors work for "theirs". If you've ever been to college you'd know that graduate assistants actually teach the classes.

-- libs are idiots (moreinterpretation@ugly.com), May 22, 2001. "

Hey dumbass, I realize you rednecks never even finished grade school, let alone having a clue about college, so I'll try to help you understand...

In order to become a professor, a student must study and work hard for several years at a college. He must pass his classes and get a degree. Often it is necessary to get a Master's degree or a PHD, which can take 6 or 8 years respectively.

One he lands a job as a professor and develops the course curriculum, he may get lazy like Dumbya and have an assistant teach the class, but he still had to work hard to get there. Unlike Dumbya, the degree was not just handed to him.

Get it, dumbass?

-- (gaaaaawd! @ repugnants. are stupid!), May 22, 2001.



In order to become a professor, a student must study and work hard for several years at a college. He must pass his classes and get a degree. Often it is necessary to get a Master's degree or a PHD, which can take 6 or 8 years respectively.

A lot of hard work, yes, but all done in an academic environment with little or no practical real-world experience. The best professors I ever had were experienced professionals who started teaching late in their careers. The vast majority of college professors do not come from that background.

-- (.@...), May 22, 2001.


*I* went to several Universities, and only ONE class was taught by an assistant to the professor, because the professor was ill. In general, all of my professors were available to their students, almost never being absent from the classroom, and open to questions either in person or via phone or E-mail. Many even offered home phone numbers. Only one [well, two, counting that assistant] had only Masters degrees. The rest all had doctorates in their field.

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), May 22, 2001.

"College faculty usually have flexible schedules. They must be present for classes, usually 12 to 16 hours per week, and for faculty and committee meetings. Most establish regular office hours for student consultations, usually 3 to 6 hours per week. Otherwise, faculty are free to decide when and where they will work, and how much time to devote to course preparation, grading, study, research, graduate student supervision, and other activities." US Dept. of Labor, Occupational Outlook Handbook

-- Remember (the@ld.forum.com), May 22, 2001.

@: I would have thought that true, also, especially since I felt my experience led to the success of the students I taught at the local Junior College. However, since those days, I've learned quite a bit about what professors [with the actual doctorate that I never got] do in their off-time.

I have a good friend who teaches Archaelogy at UTA. He's oftentimes off on a "dig" or a trip somewhere to study relics found. Both of my Biology professors last semester [when I thought I'd extend my horizons to a teaching profession] had spent their summers in foreign lands studying [via real-life experience] the Botany or Herpetology in which they'd received their doctorates. They shared their real- life experiences with the class. They weren't "slugs", adhering to textbook "theories."

Perhaps in contrast, I took a night class last semester in Educational Psychology [or something like that.] This class was taught by a practicing child psychologist. His answer to everything was drugs. He was giving 5-year-olds anti-depressants. He thought just about every kid who entered his office had attention deficit disorder. The class teased him on his lack of skills in English and Mathematics.

Sorry to take the thread away from the politics involved.

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), May 22, 2001.


Education is a fine tool ,if used to acquire=wisdom. but where to find wisdom??? oh yah=''the fear[awe] of GOD is the beginning of wisdom!!!

-- al-d. (dogs@zianet.com), May 22, 2001.


"(.@...), "

You obviously haven't been around a college in a long time. Most schools require a minimum of a Master's degree to be a professor. You can be an assistant professor or an instructor with only a Bachelor's, but not a professor.

-- (get@clue.please), May 22, 2001.


Anita, I thought that's what they were paid to do. Teaching is not really a professor's full time job, it's only part of it. I thought that professors got paid to continue research in their field and publish, publish, publish. If they didn't, they couldn't get their grants.

I was offered to teach at the university here. As I recall they only paid a couple thousand dollars for a three hour course. It didn't seem worth it to me for all the other stuff a teacher must do besides lecture for three hours. Full time professors on the other hand get paid very well ($60K is what I had heard some twenty five years ago) but again, they needed to do the research and publish thing.

On the professors with life experience thing... It seems to me that night time teachers have a full time job doing something else. They are the only ones with OJT. Full time professors do not have any other job besides teach and research. Just my opinion.

-- Maria (anon@ymous.com), May 23, 2001.


Folks would pay to have Maria chatter for 3 solid hours?

-- (too@funny.haha), May 23, 2001.

That poor university must be desperate to scrape the bottom of the barrel like that. I'd demand my money back if I had paid for a course she taught.

-- Outraged Graduate (outraged@graduate.edu), May 23, 2001.

Troll, you MUST feel happy wallowing in your own ignorance, just like a pig in the mud.

Outraged Gratuate, you seem to forget that you're free to enroll in any course you like (assuming you satisfy prereqs) with any instructor you like. It's not like high school, which I'm sure you barely passed.

-- Maria (anon@ymous.com), May 23, 2001.


Not exactly true, Maria, as anyone with an advanced degree should know. Even at large universities, certain requirements for graduation, usually but not always departmental requirements, are often taught by only one professor. This is especially true of graduate level classes and smaller departments. It's completely reasonable to believe that at some point a college student will have to take a required course for graduation that's only offered by one teacher. Now whether or not that teacher is a full time member of faculty is another story.

-- Tarzan the Ape Man (tarzan@swingingthroughthejunglewithouta.net), May 23, 2001.

"Outraged Gratuate, you seem to forget that you're free to enroll in any course you like (assuming you satisfy prereqs) with any instructor you like."

Bwaaahahahaaa!!

Can tell YOU'VE never been to college!

Your ignorance is exceeded only by your stupidity.

-- (earth@to.maria), May 23, 2001.


Now I actually need requirements to sit and watch Maria babble on for 3 hours?

Keep it up, this is hilarious.

-- (too@funny.haha), May 23, 2001.


The number of credit hours a course has is determined by the hours spent in class per week, not per day. In other words, you'll need requirements to listen to Maria one hour per day, three days per week for however long the course is (semester, trimester, what have you).

-- Tarzan the Ape Man (tarzan@swingingthroughthejunglewithouta.net), May 23, 2001.

Trust me Tarz, nothing Maria has to offer is gunna take longer than 5 minutes.

-- (too@funny.haha), May 23, 2001.

Maria the ape man is baiting you via troll usage.

Tarzan, leave her the hell alone already why do you have to pick on her every chance you get? Are you lonely?

-- for a minute (sit@on.thecouch), May 23, 2001.


Maria: I really don't know what's included or excluded in the "perks" of a professor. I know that different locales pay less or more than others. Regarding publishing, my friend DOES publish on occasion. If my profs did, they never referenced their publications. My ex had some Accounting profs at DePaul who preferred to reference their publications in class rather than teach. I remember it angering him, and he said he'd received more classroom attention at the local JC than he did from these profs who "just wanted to "tout" their books.

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), May 23, 2001.

"The number of credit hours a course has is determined by the hours spent in class per week, not per day." Not exactly, as anyone with an advanced degree should know. Some courses last consecutively for three hours (ie, for the hard of understanding, in one day).

Anita, I understand the frustration. For me, some have used a text book, they authored, and the class acts as tech writing, catching all the mistakes. Those were fun!

-- Maria (anon@ymous.com), May 23, 2001.


Jeeeezuz Keeerist Maria! Gaaaaaawd are you dense!

I suggest you quit while you are behind and go to the drunks forum, your statements will make almost as much sense as their incoherent babblings.

-- (un@frickin.believable), May 23, 2001.


Why do people have to jump in and screw up a discussion just for the sake of being obnoxious? People with different beliefs in some areas do have the ability to agree and/or discuss other subjects without hostility. It's called maturity.

-- Cherri (jessam5@home.com), May 23, 2001.

"Why do people have to jump in and screw up a discussion just for the sake of being obnoxious?"

What discussion? This thread has been toast since the first Repugnant post by Lars. The only thing the Repugs are willing to discuss in a civil manner is how to be fat, lying, greedy, disgusting pigs.

-- (good luck @ with. that), May 23, 2001.


GLWT--

What do you have against Whiffenpoofs? Or is it sheep that animate your animus?

BTW, does anyone know how much it costs/year to send a "student" to Yale? My guess is $25K.

-- Lars (larsguy@yahoo.com), May 24, 2001.


Undergraduate fees will total $34,030 next year for tuition, room and board.

-- (spoiled@brats.only), May 24, 2001.

You're a little low Lars. According to this link the tuition at Yale for 2000-2001 is $25220. and the total with room and board is $32880. This does not include expenses at Morey's.

What do you want? Quality brainwashing is not cheap. Baaa baaa baaa.

-- (Bursar@Yale.edu), May 24, 2001.


MAMAS DON'T LET YOUR BABIES GROW UP TO BE COWBOYS Written by Ed & Patsy Bruce

Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be Yalies

They'll never stay home and they're always alone

Even with someone they love

-- (WillieNelson@Gnu.Haven), May 24, 2001.


Bursar,

The 2000-2001 year just ended dumbass. My figure is correct for this coming year.

-- (get@clue.dipshit), May 24, 2001.


Cherri, I keep forgetting, DON'T WATER THE GREMLINS. :)

-- Maria (anon@ymous.com), May 24, 2001.

"Get a clue dipshit",

What's with the 'tude? I posted before I saw your post. Let's just round it off at 40K. Such a deal!

-- (Bursar@Yale.edu), May 24, 2001.


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