I’m Not The Only One

I didn’t realize how controversial the whole Notre Dame’s issue (granting President Barack Obama an honorary degree and inviting him to give their 2009 commencement speech) was until I logged on to YouTube the other day and saw the featured video was of Notre Dame students and members of the Roman Catholic community sounding off on the issue.  I was made even more aware when I learned of notredamescandal.com.

Honestly, I think people made a much bigger deal out of it than it really was.  I think the real scandal was that President Obama was offered an “honorary” degree in the first place.  Besides the fact that it is a slap in the face to all the students who paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in tuition and spent years earning their degrees, an honorary degree, which is usually a Masters or Doctorate, is nothing more than a cheap fundraising gimmick.

As soon as I graduated from college, I began receiving letters from them asking for money, detailing all the programs and initiatives my donation would be supporting.  No doubt granting someone rich and famous an honorary degree would give Notre Dame an excuse to basically harass Obama for donations forever.  It also benefits Notre Dame because they can include President Obama among their alma mater which will make them look more attractive to prospective students and donors.  The universities in question even go so far as to refer to these grantees as “doctor” as if their honorary PhD’s meant anything.  It’s a joke.

The biggest joke regarding honorary degrees is that the people who recieve them don’t really need the degrees.  People who are offered honorary degrees have already established successful careers and don’t need another degree to further themselves professionally.  Universities aren’t exactly into offering free degrees to poor people or middle-income people struggling to maintain their lifestyles.  You know, people who would actually benefit economically from possessing a Masters or even an undergrad degree.

Real students have to possess a Masters degree before they can pursue a Ph.D.  But don’t tell that to “Dr.” Maya Angelou, who despite not even having so much as an Associates degree has been given honorary degrees from 30 different universities.  “Dr.” George W. Bush, who was given a Doctorate in Law (ironic considering he never seemed to know anything about Constitutional Law) by Yale University.  At least he had a Masters in Business Administration before getting his phoney Doctorate.

You don’t even need to have a high school diploma to recieve an honorary degree, or even be human.  Just ask Dr. Kermit the Frog, who was given a Doctorate of Amphibious Letters by Long Island University in 1996 and even gave the commencement speech.  Apparently the concept of academic integrity only applies to students and not to the eggheads who hand out phoney degrees to whomever can bring their institution more notoriety and more money.

My own school, York College, joined in this ridiculous college practice a few years ago when it “honored” Miriam Colon, actress, playwright and founder of the Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre, with a “Doctorate in Humane Letters” at their commencement ceremony.  Bear in mind that York College is mainly an undergraduate school, and the only Masters program it has is in occupational therapy.  Despite that fact, York still gave Ms. Colon a Doctorate, albeit a phoney one.  It will probably be the only Doctorate York will ever give anyone.

When Ms. Colon was given her Doctorate I asked a York professor why a school whose only Masters program was (at the time) only a year old was suddenly handing out Doctorates, much less to a person who had absolutely no connection whatsoever to said school.  The professor reasoned that the degree “didn’t really mean anything” to which I replied, “if it doesn’t mean anything, why give it in the first place?”  His response was that awarding honorary degree was “a college tradition”.  I replied to this African-American professor that slavery was a Southern tradition and asked him if Abraham Lincoln should have broken that tradition by forcing the South to free their slaves.

I understand that at one time universities must have had a reasonable justification to award honorary degrees, but to maintain tradition simply for tradition’s sake is ridiculous.

While I agree that Notre Dame may have compromised its Roman Catholic principles by inviting a very pro-choice Obama to speak at their commencement ceremony.  By offering him a make-believe Doctorate, the school’s president has also shown that he sees him as little more than an ATM machine and an excuse to get the university’s name in the newspapers.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 20th, 2009 at 9:39 pm and is filed under Barack Obama, Straight Up Scams, Spirituality, Hypocrisy, Jokes, Education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.