Back on June 1, a stir was created at the Oak Park River Forest High School graduation ceremony for the Class of 2014 by the speech given by Dr. Steve Gevinson, a retired English language studies and arts teacher, and current OPRFHS District 200 Board Member.
After having read the speech's text in The Wednesday Journal newspaper, I feel like offering some of my own thoughts, but I do so with a three-point disclaimer: I'm only aware of the stirring it caused from reading about it in the newspaper--I have not gathered any reactions from people who were actually there. I did not vote for Dr. Gevinson when he first ran for a seat on the board in the April 2013 elections, nor do I intend to should he run for reelection. And this is the first time I've really given some substantial thought to the high school graduation, as I do not regard it among the more memorable occasions of my life, for it capped an education that was fraught with a lot of institutional issues. I don't elaborate on the reasons for last two points as that would stray from the purpose of this blog post.
(Also, for those of you unfamiliar with Oak Park, its people, and the surrounding area, if you go to the link above and go down past the speech to read the comments in that section, you'll kind of get a sense of what the people are like around here, though I wouldn't recommend just reading the comments of any Wednesday Journal story to do so.)
What surprised me about the speech was its length. From what I remember of my high school graduation, the lengthier speech was given by one of the students who had won the Scholarship Cup designation. After the superintendent, a fine man named Dr. Weninger, who I got to know well during the two years we were both at OPRFHS, handed us over to the Board to have our graduation certified, per Illinois state law, the Board president, Dr. Millard, made a few short remarks, summarized in the acronym: GO MAD, standing for "Go out and make a difference." But Dr. Gevinson's speech in 2014 was much more in-depth.
There were some very distinct political references made in the speech that I do not feel belong in a speech at an occasion like this, especially in remarks that clearly looked down on wealthy, Caucasian, church-going people who were the majority in Oak Park decades ago. I feel the objective he was getting at in his speech, reflecting on the positive changes that have occurred which have made Oak Park and its public high school a more open, diverse community, were better accomplished in what he had to say about Spoken Word, a poetry group at the high school that does performances in a rap style on contemporary topics. I felt that really got at the positive change that occurred in the high school community, which would have served as a better driver of the speech.
Another problematic aspect was how he wasn't able to cover River Forest in his speech because of time constraints. While the high school is in Oak Park, I feel that on an occasion like this, more recognition should be given to the students who had to come into another village for 4 years for their education, especially given the class cheer at the end of the ceremony, which to spell out the letters of Oak Park, and then yell out Oak Park two or three times successively. If the focus of the speech didn't go so much toward the changes in Oak Park, I feel like this wouldn't have been much of an issue.
It was also interesting when he wanted to offer some words of wisdom based on Oak Park's open and diverse nature, noting other places are not like Oak Park, even referring to the graduates' "alma mater"--a term I thought only applied to colleges and universities, not a high school. I couldn't help but think about the contrast between Oak Park schools, where diversity is highlighted and people are always striving to embrace it more fully, and Valparaiso University, which was more noticeably Caucasian majority, though with quite a diversity of opinion.
All in all, it was an okay speech that had its moments in seeking to inspire the 800-something graduates who will go forth from Oak Park and River Forest to places all over--though I only wish I knew how many to ValpU.
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