"It's just $35"
I noticed a new entry into the accoutrements of graduation attire, a banner asserting what group one belongs to, such as Asian, Indigenous, etc. Class warfare and Marx had intruded to the graduation ceremony. Instead of bringing together, these banners further divide.
Harvard has an interesting set of this class associations. I thought back on Joe Kennedy and wonder if he would have worn a green sash acclaiming that he was Irish, how about Jack Kennedy, Kissinger as a Jew, and the list goes on.
At the one MIT graduation I decided to go to, my PhD, it was in 1971, amidst the Viet Nam War, a muggy hot day, and the only ones getting degrees were PhDs, no speaker, just walk up, get your hood, take your degree and go back down to mother and father who were getting more unpleasant as the heat bore down on all. It was fast and well processed. We were all MIT, no class warfare between us.
My grand daughter just graduated from UMass Amherst, amid the local Hamas protesters and many students wore their class, Marxist version, banners. But my grand daughter when asked said it was $35 and that was two hours of work at the local store, and saw no reason to assert her class identity.
In addition the rather child like glee exhibited was in stark contrast to the subdued mood back in 1971, a year after Kent State and with the War still afoot. No class assertions, no speaker, no child like glee, just all of us trying to get a job amidst the Nixonian Financial collapse of 1971!
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