Commencement Day Orators Chosen

A panel of judges this week chose the student speakers for Commencement Day, selecting orations about learning from failure, enduring 15 years in prison, and what John Harvard would say about applying education today.

Jonathan W. Engel '86 won the Senior English Orator competition; Yamil H. Kouri--who is being awarded a master's degree this year from the Graduate School of Public Health--will speak as the Graduate Orator, and Gary E. Shapiro '86 will deliver the Latin Oration to a Tercentenary Theatre audience on June 5.

The winners were chosen on the basis of content and delivery, said competition coordinator Richard Marius, who is also director of expository writing. "We wanted something fitting to Commencement, and something we felt that students would respond to," he said.

Engel's speech focuses on the role of failure and pain in life. "It's impossible to go through Harvard without failing at some time, whether academically, socially or in extracurriculars," he said. "It's important to see that pain is a positive and important part of growing up."

"Those people who have never failed here are either God or they've never put themselves in a position where they could fail. You've got to be willing to take risks," said Engel.

Kouri's speech explains how his Harvard experience helped him survive 15 years in a Cuban prison.

Kouri left Harvard in 1958, during his sophomore year at the College, to fight in the Cuban Revolution under Fidel Castro. He earned a medical degree in Cuba but was condemned to death in 1965 for his opposition to Castro's communist policies, he said.

Kouri was freed 1979, after surviving a starvation diet, physical brutality, and more than two years of solitary confinement.

"In prison, the principles I was first immersed in here at Harvard--such as truth, decency, caring and concern--allowed me to survive," said Kouri.

"It is one thing to discuss these ideals in a classroom, and another thing when you must fight to sustain them. In the application of these principles you have a real sign, whether you are faithful to them or not faithful to them," he said.

Kouri, whose son graduated from the College while he was in prison, returned here to work for a master's and then a doctoral degree in public health.

Shapiro, the Latin Orator, will tell what he described as a "far-fetched story about the John Harvard statue coming to life for its 350th birthday and delivering an oration from the top of Widener about the right uses of a college education."

"Even though I don't know Latin, his speech technique was good enough that I could really get the gist of what was going on," said Joel A. Getz '86, class marshall and one of the competition judges.

Translations of Shapiro's speech will be distributed at Commencement for the benefit of those who haven't made classics their major.

Admistration and faculty members and two senior class marshalls chose the winners from a pool of about 30 applicants, said Marius, who will now help the chosen people rehearse daily until Commencement.

"By Commencement, I'll know their speeches so well that I could give any of them myself," he said.