As you can see throughout this section and in other parts of this paper, something rather disturbing happened at last semester?s graduation ceremony for Sacramento State students. A speaker was unable to continue her speech as many in the audience booed and stomped their feet in disagreement. This is quite disturbing. Others thought what she said was the troubling thing.

Now there is some discrepancy as to how many of the protesters were graduates and how many were parents. But there were certainly some students involved in the disruptions. One student I talked to called it a combination of boredom (length of speech), and the fact that the graduation wasn?t the time or place for this kind of speech, whether or not Janis Heaphy, the publisher of the Sacramento Bee, made good points in her speech or not.

The worst part about the whole scenario is that one would think that the graduates and their parents would be very interested in what the future may hold. This is the future that they will raise families, work, and live in after all.

All Heaphy was trying to say was that the post Sept. 11 world is going to be different and we should be going into it with our eyes open. This may not be the popular rally cry in America, but it is certainly not a surprising one, as I have heard the same argument from countless people in the last few months. What the speaker was saying should not have been shocking, even if the majority of the audience did not agree.

Heaphy also explained that the future has never seemed so uncertain and decisions made in the immediate future will in turn shape the graduate?s futures. She encouraged the students, or planned to before she was stripped of her forum, to be informed and not complacent, and to uphold democracy. She stressed that we as a society should ask ourselves how many civil liberties we are willing to give up. Many in the audience did not want to hear this at all, and therefore they didn?t feel that anyone else should be allowed to either.

The argument that these ideas about the future of our nation are inappropriate at a college graduation is ludicrous. Each and every person graduating that day is heading into this uncertain future. Why would they be so uninterested in what an educated professional had to say about what might be going on in this country, the one all of them were heading out into? No doubt the protesters celebrated when Heaphy finally gave in to their demand that she cease speaking. It was majority rule, the democratic process in action. The people demanded she stop and she did. Ironically, Heaphy was trying to tell the graduates that this democratic process is in jeopardy and that it should be protected. Only that part of the speech, in her conclusion, was never read.