Commencement speaker named

Sources confirm Bollinger will deliver keynote address

Sources close to the University Board of Regents said yesterday that the regents plan to invite President Lee Bollinger to deliver the keynote address at next month's Spring Commencement ceremony.

The source said Bollinger will accept the invitation.

Bollinger

"It is an opportunity for him to talk directly to students who were, after all, his first (graduating) class," the source said.

The regents also will be asked at their board meeting today to approve a list of candidates who have been nominated to receive an honorary degree from the University.

The source said that it has been a tradition for a new University president to deliver the keynote to commencement speech during his first year in office. Bollinger was selected for the presidential post by the regents last November and he took office in February.

Former President James Duderstadt delivered the keynote address for the 1989 Spring Commencement, shortly after he took office.

Even if the regents had extended an invitation to deliver the keynote another speaker, Bollinger would have been expected to speak at the ceremony as University president.

This year's candidates for honorary degrees are: Mary Frances Berry, chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and this year's keynote speaker for the University's Martin Luther King Jr. Day symposium; Robert Fiske, Jr., trial attorney and original special counsel to the Whitewater investigation; mathematician Sergei Godunov; and Eugene Roberts, managing editor of the New York Times.

The official announcement of the commencement speaker at today's regents' meeting will bring an end to weeks of speculation and rumors that had been circulating about the identity of the speaker.

"I heard it was Bush or Clinton, but I guess those rumors come up every year," said LSA senior Alyssa Dunn.

Dunn said she is disappointed that the keynote speaker isn't a nationally recognized figure.

"I don't think it's fair," Dunn said. "I'm just really disappointed."

When LSA senior Christine Gray heard the news, she said if she didn't have family coming in from California, she would not attend the ceremony at Michigan Stadium.

"I was wondering why it took so long, but it made me hope it would be someone better known," Gray said. "I'm disappointed it's not someone coming in from the outside to give us a new perspective."

Engineering senior Chris DeRonne called the selection "strange."

"I think a lot of people will be disappointed," DeRonne said. "We figure we can see him speak anytime ... people were just expecting someone different."

Not all seniors were disenchanted with the news.

"Every year it seems like we get the worst speakers," Gladis said. "I wish we got someone big. We pay enough money."

Recent commencement speakers include President Bush, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, Spelman College President Johnetta Cole, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and cartoonist Cathy Guisewite.

LSA junior Todd Gladis said he is worried about who next year's commencement speaker will be.

The Spring Commencement is scheduled to take place Saturday, May 3, at 9:30 p.m. in the Michigan Stadium.

04-18-97