DON'T EVEN THINK about dining at a fine restaurant tonight.
By the coincidence of scheduling, about 9,000 degrees and certificates will be awarded today by Baltimore colleges and universities. By Education Beat's calculations, this is a record for a single day in the groves of Baltimore academia.
Three of the public university giants, Towson State, the University of Maryland Baltimore County and the University of Baltimore, have graduations today, joining Peabody, Baltimore Hebrew University and that 500-pound gorilla, the Johns Hopkins University.
With the University of Maryland College Park graduating tomorrow, there are more proud parents visiting the area than at any time in memory, and hundreds, of course, have telephoned us before reserving a table at the Brass Elephant. Education Beat takes their questions in random order:
Should we take these ceremonies seriously?
No. Commencements are joyous times, particularly for those who are relieved today of paying higher education's ever-increasing tuitions. Commencements are times for laughing and joking and kissing and hugging and carrying on. No one cares what's said in the public ceremonies, and nothing of import ever is.
But graduations seem to be more serious than they used to be. Is this an accurate observation?
Yes. Education Beat attended the Maryland Institute, College of Art commencement Monday at the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall. Everyone had a good time, and the graduates wore some wonderfully outlandish outfits, but this commencement was funereal compared with Maryland Institute graduations of 20 and 25 years ago.
Commencements have lost their flavor of social protest. Remember that in 1968, some universities never held graduations. The times were too turbulent for the authorities to take a chance.
Do honorary degrees have any legal standing?
Not in Maryland, according to the Maryland Higher Education Commission. They're worth the paper they're printed on, and colleges that can't confer real doctorates because they have no graduate programs think nothing of giving out honorary doctorates. The honorary doctorate of "humane letters" is our favorite. We've been searching for a humane letter.
What's the most bizarre honorary degree so far this year?
Maryland colleges have been fairly strait-laced. The national award (so far) goes to Southampton College on Long Island, N.Y., which gave a doctorate of amphibious letters to Kermit the Frog. Kermit's speech was much longer than those of two human honorary degree recipients, prompting criticism from conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh. (Perhaps because of Kermit's environmental concerns, Limbaugh assumes he's a liberal.)
Who conferred the most bizarre honorary degree in Baltimore's modern history?
Hands down, the award goes to Hopkins, which 20 years ago gave a degree to Princess Ashraf Pahlavi, twin sister of that humanitarian, the Shah of Iran. At a ceremony at the Lyric culminating Hopkins' centennial, the princess was honored for her "dedication to social and humanitarian causes." Numerous VIPs got to see angry protesters, including Iranian students, hauled off to jail. Embarrassed, Hopkins subsequently established guidelines for conferring honoraries.
What are the most inspiring of this year's Baltimore graduation stories?
As usual, there are many to choose from. It's always a problem for the newspaper, because in selecting, we necessarily leave out. Here is a spring quartet:
Anibal Brisueno, 65, was awarded a certificate as a microcomputer specialist last week by Baltimore City Community College. The father of eight and grandfather of 13, he did three tours of duty in Vietnam as a Marine. Brisueno earlier had earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Baltimore.
Yvonne Violet Shashoua, 22, tonight receives a degree in Judaic studies, with honors, from Baltimore Hebrew University. At precisely the same hour, Shashoua graduates as the valedictorian of UMBC. She plans to pursue a doctorate in mathematics at College Park.
Damon Tweedy, 22, is one of 35 Meyerhoff Scholars to graduate this evening from UMBC and the first African-American in the sciences to earn a perfect 4.0 grade point average at the school. Tweedy will enter medical school at Duke this fall, having rejected offers from Hopkins, Maryland, Penn and Yale.
Nicolee Wilkin, 21, will graduate from Hopkins today with degrees she earned concurrently, one in music and the other in international relations. Wilkin completed this undertaking in four years by taking 30 credits a semester.
What other commencement should we know about today?
Away from the glitter of Homewood, 25 adult graduates of the External High School Degree Program in Baltimore County will walk across the stage at Loch Raven High School to pick up the high school diplomas they missed the first time around.
The average age of the graduates is 42. The oldest is 67. Most have come back to finish a task they feel was left undone. They, too, deserve pomp and circumstance.
Pub Date: 5/22/96