First, ASU students were told we were essentially too dumb to tie our shoes.
Then, we were told that even if we were somehow smart enough to be able to tie our shoes, we might as well keep our heads hanging down out of shame.
When the national news media caught wind of ASU’s “snubbing” President Barack Obama by not planning to give him an honorary degree, the University as a whole came under attack, getting reamed nonstop and, of course, being transformed into the latest news cycle’s carcass. Naturally, the media vultures have been circling ever since, and somehow the students are the ones caught in the middle.
In the fallout, ASU has been labeled in the national media as a school where students go to get “a master’s degree in lawn-mowing.” It has been labeled a second-rate university. It has been labeled a racist party school.
And what has sparked this odious assault on the Sun Devil nation? A decision made by a six-person committee — at a 67,000-student, 12,000-employee university.
The committee determined that it would reinforce the standards set when ASU President Michael Crow’s reign began more than six years ago.
Under these guidelines, the committee has not given an honorary degree to a sitting American politician and, unlike other universities, ASU has stayed the course on the modern notion that an honorary degree ought to be something that is printed and handed out willy-nilly when a school is going through the motions of putting on a major event for a dignitary.
According to the University, an honorary degree should recognize someone who has committed his or her life to making strides toward the betterment of Arizona or toward the betterment of higher education.
Is that a commendable practice? Certainly. Does it mean President Obama should have been left out in the cold? Well, no, not necessarily.
If anyone is the exception to ASU’s honorary-degree policy, it is certainly Obama. Without a doubt, the decision to deny any honor to anyone holding the office of the President of the United States is iffy at best.
However, by choosing to omit the exception, ASU has become the exception.
The University is standing rigidly by its principles. Honorary degrees at ASU have traditionally been lifetime-achievement awards.
No matter how much Obama has accomplished (which is a lot), the man is 47 years old and only just starting to accomplish the greatest things of his life. Within the framework of ASU’s precedent, the committee’s decision, though standing on shaky ground, makes sense.
Most importantly, the members of the committee have done something most have not in recent times — they have stuck to their word and to their principles.
So was this intentionally insulting? We’re going to go with no.
Besides, why should we believe that a man who has earned Ivy League degrees on his own accord is insulted by not getting a relatively hollow degree that amounts to nothing more than a tired gesture?
After all, honors aside, Obama is getting everything he could ask for by speaking at ASU. He will have more than 70,000 people at Sun Devil Stadium serving as a highly receptive audience and creating an electric atmosphere. This is quite unlike Notre Dame (a university that will bestow an honorary degree upon him), where the mere announcement of Obama’s speaking engagement was met with distasteful protest about the president’s leanings on abortion. Surely, the protests are more disrespectful to the office than ASU’s nonmalicious decision.
Furthermore, Obama will get a chance to promote Crow’s university concept that shares the administration’s beliefs that every citizen possible who is qualified to do work at a university level should receive a quality, yet affordable, education.
Ultimately, the president will walk away with a tremendous number of benefits. Yet, somehow, the fact that the president may not walk away with a degree overshadows all of that.
Was the decision framed poorly by the University? Sure, it was. They never said he didn’t deserve it, they just said not right now. They are still honoring him, in fact, with a scholarship program for underprivileged students — something that honors Obama in a true and tangible way that is far more impactful than any honorary degree.
Nobody at ASU has said he is not an amazing man or a generation-changing leader. And even the harshest of Obama’s critics must say that he deserves accolades for his achievements.
But all of this uproar over such an asinine practice as giving honorary degrees?
During the past few decades, the practice of honorary degrees at most major universities has devolved into a door prize. They are a mere social norm. It is similar to when a championship sports team visits the White House and brings the commander in chief a cheesy jersey. If a team, based on its franchise’s precedent, decided not to print up a jersey, would that matter to anyone?
Yet, here we are. This decision, as truly inconsequential as it is, has turned into an implication of the entire school.
Throughout the past few days, ASU has been generalized into an oversized, bureaucratic piece of trash that is driven entirely by neo-conservative ideologies. Apparently, ASU is filled with racists and bigots. The school is for kids not good enough to make it into their first-choice school. It is a party school and a punch line.
Clearly, this lone semicontroversial decision of a committee that makes up a miniscule fraction of 1 percent of the University community is a sign that the school’s admissions standards allow the riff-raff of the academic world through its doors, that an ASU degree is more worthless than a penny and that an ASU education is nothing more than cerveza and sun-tan lotion.
Or at least that has been the attitude adopted from coast to coast.
Well, that’s just great and entirely productive. Thank you, nation, for the stunning, broad accusations and horribly offensive generalizations.
Perhaps, the media is right. Maybe we should be ashamed that our school lands in the top 20 in producing Fulbright Fellows and attracting National Merit Scholars. Or that we boast the nation’s first School of Sustainability. Or that dozens of colleges on campus rank among the nation’s finest in their respective subjects.
Yes, perhaps we should be ashamed.
Or perhaps what is truly shameful in this situation is that the news media is wasting so many resources blowing this one menial aspect of our University commencement out of proportion, especially when there’s a critical one they are overlooking: On May 13, ASU will be graduating 8,000 degree-holding members of the work force to a nation with a rising unemployment rate.
Apparently a trivial symbolic diploma is more important. Either that or, by chance, we’ve gained just one more glimpse into why our media titans are dropping off one by one.
At the end of the day, what this entire issue boils down to is that the national media has churned up yet another nonstory into a buttery headline, working the general public into a feeding frenzy. The uproar was manufactured.
The committee’s decision, whether unfortunate or reasonable, is not an issue of racism. It is not a rash of vengeance in the name of Sen. John McCain. It should not reflect at all on our fine institution.
And honestly, outside of The State Press, it is not really even a news story.
This was, in essence, a way to fill out the news cycle and satiate the public’s desire for all things Obama.
Perhaps now, folks, we can focus on the real news on the real issues at hand.
Ultimately, ASU has very little of which to be ashamed. And those who say otherwise — hello, mainstream media, we’re looking right at you — ought to be the ones hanging their heads in shame. After all, May 13 isn’t about Obama’s credentials or a flimsy piece of paper for his presidential scrapbook, it’s about the 8,000 graduates, their accomplishments and their futures.
