Board president's tirade was an embarrassment

To the editor:
At the June 21st Highland Park High School graduation, Board of Education member Wendy Saiff delivered a completely inappropriate, politically-driven diatribe, replete with specious and demonstrably false assertions, and even some Sarah Palin-esque mispronunciations. I could go through it line by line and point out the many falsehoods and internal inconsistencies. But that would be too easy.

And it would miss the point.

Everyone -- except, seemingly, Ms. Saiff -- knows that high school graduations should celebrate collective student achievement and collective memory. For many, graduation reflects years of hard work. Even for those who coasted, graduation is a rite of passage. For many graduates, it is the last time they will have their name read favorably in public. For all, it is the last night they will spend as a group with the people with whom they have grown up.

Instead of paying tribute to the departing students and their parents -- who have the primary role in education -- and wishing the students well, Ms. Saiff shrilly held forth for over twenty minutes about teacher pay, public school funding and state and national politics, including such topics as medical insurance reform and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. (I also oppose the wars, although not on graduation night.) In so doing, she demonstrated a completely undeveloped sense of propriety. Nothing was learned from her speech. No minds were changed.

This was not a college graduation, at which even speakers of stature understand that the occasion is not about them and that they have only limited license to state their views. It was a high school graduation. If Ms. Saiff aspires to the big stage and to address what she sees as the big issues, principally by parroting platitudes, that is her prerogative. But she should do so during a political campaign when people can walk away, not on graduation night, when a captive audience lacks that option.

How pathetic it was for Ms. Saiff to be disrespected not only by a murmuring audience but also by the 18 year old student body president, who facetiously thanked her for her "uh . . . informative" message. In case this unfavorable reaction is not enough to discourage a similar rhetorical misadventure next year, she must not be invited back.

Mark Oshinskie, J.D.
Highland Park