Commencement Orators Selected

Three women will deliver the student orations at this year’s Commencement exercises for the first time in recent memory.

Alicia Menendez ’05 will deliver the English oration, Caitlin C. Gillespie ’05 will present the Latin oration, and Dorinda J. Carter, a doctoral student at the Graduate School of Education (GSE), will be the graduate school orator.

Though this comes in the midst of intense discussion on Harvard’s campus about the role of women in academia, Richard J. Tarrant, chair of the committee which selects the speakers, said the only thing considered when choosing the orators from a competitive pool of 50 applicants was the quality of the speeches.

The three orators were selected by an eight-person committee of faculty members and administrators last week.

“We evaluate the speeches as to how we think they will sound to the Commencement audience,” Tarrant said. “We hope for a kind of mix.”

Menendez pointed out that not only are the three orators all female, but two of them identify themselves as minorities.

Menendez said her speech will deal with how her perception of Harvard has changed since she was admitted.

“My experience is that Harvard isn’t perfect and Harvard students aren’t perfect and yet there are so many glimmers of perfection,” Menendez said.

Gillespie said that during recent years, the Latin speech has been lighter than its English counterparts.

While the Latin oration is one of Harvard’s older traditions—dating back to 1642—Gillespie said that her oration will create a very timely metaphor. She plans to compare her experience at Harvard to a game of baseball.

“We’re all graduating within the year that’s best for Boston and graduating is almost comparable to a victory in the world series,” Gillespie said.

Translations of the Latin address will be distributed at Commencement.

Carter said her speech, which draws upon her experience as an African-American woman, is a call to action for graduates.

Carter is the first orator from the GSE in recent memory, and some GSE faculty believe she may be the first graduate school orator ever selected from the GSE.

“There have been whispers in the air that the graduate speaker is never a [GSE] person,” Carter said. “I figured why not try for it.”

Tarrant said that this year the committee attempted to solicit more applications than in previous years.

But, despite increasing advertising and doubling the prize money to $1,000, the number of applicants climbed only slightly.

“Asking for submissions after spring break and fairly soon after people have submitted senior theses might be somewhat of a deterrent,” Tarrant said.

Next year the committee is considering moving the timetable back to allow more time for students to write speeches once they return from spring break.

But because of the preparation required by Commencement the judges are limited in how far back they can push the application deadline.

“We’ll see if we can put it to the middle of April rather than the beginning,” Tarrant said.

For the orators, the benefits of being selected extend beyond the prize money and prestige.

“We get special guest tickets so our parents can sit near the front,” Carter said.

But the rewards come only after intense preparation.

After being selected as a speaker each of the orators will be coached on pronunciation, pace, and memorization by members of the judging committee, said Tarrant.

On June 9, the three speakers will address an audience of around 32,000 parents, students, faculty, and alumni gathered in Tercentenary Theater to watch Harvard’s Commencement exercises.

Last year Kathryn L. Rakoczy ’04 delivered the English oration.

Pankaj K. Agarwalla ’04 gave the Latin oration.

Harvard Law School student Stephen E. Frank ’95 presented the graduate student oration.

—Staff writer Joshua P. Rogers can be reached at jprogers@fas.harvard.edu