Commencing Now, It’s the Time for Degrees of Advice

--This is the week that graduating students throughout the country will begin getting, along with their precious bits of sheepskin, a host of admonitions, reminiscences and homespun homilies from a plethora of worldly figures pressed into service by universities as commencement speakers. At Southwestern Adventist College in Keene, Tex., columnist Ann Landers was blunt. “Life is rough for everyone . . . . Life isn’t always fair,” said Landers, who accepted an honorary doctorate of humanities degree. “Whatever it is that hits the fan, it’s never evenly distributed--some always tend to get more of it than others.”

--At the University of Michigan commencement, speaker Mike Wallace was met with the backs of about 20 black students protesting remarks the TV journalist made six years ago. A bank’s contracts would be difficult to understand “if you’re reading them over the watermelons or over tacos,” Wallace, a 1939 graduate of the school, had said. Wallace, receiving an honorary doctorate of laws degree, apologized for the “arguably racist” comments, and warned students about subtle prejudice. “It’s the mean stuff that worries me--the behind-the-hand stuff, the self-aggrandizing put-downs that begin to creep in and infect the dialogue,” he said.

--Meanwhile, television talk show host Oprah Winfrey, giving the commencement address at her alma mater, decided she might as well tie up a few loose ends while she was there--so she picked up her diploma. As a Tennessee State University senior 12 years ago, Winfrey had only one course project to finish to graduate, which she finally got around to recently. Winfrey told this year’s graduating seniors that she had deliberately stayed away from student politics during her college years. “I am grateful to those who marched, picketed and went to jail because they are all bridges that you and I have crossed over on to get to this side,” she said. “But I also saw my goal as that of preparing myself to take advantage of the opportunities that the student protests were opening up.”

--Two envelopes containing the remains of the Italian poet Dante Alighieri have been reported missing from Florence’s National Library. Additionally, the envelopes could have been missing for as long as 58 years, the museum said in announcing the results of a yearlong investigation. The remains of the 14th-Century poet and moral philosopher were last put on public display in 1929, and were then locked away.