News
Convocation Speaker Confirmed
Soledad O’Brien to speak before grads
April 4, 2007 - 11:00pmCNN anchor Soledad O’Brien will be this year’s Convocation speaker, multiple sources have confirmed with The Sun.
O’Brien has anchored CNN’s flagship morning program American Morning since July 2003, along with co-anchor Miles O’Brien (no relation). Prior to joining CNN, she anchored NBC News’ Weekend Today beginning in July 1999, where she covered stories such as John F. Kennedy Jr.’s plane crash and school shootings in Colorado and Oregon.
As anchor for CNN, O’Brien reported on the impact of Hurricane Katrina, and the London terrorism attacks in July 2005. In fall 2004, she anchored coverage of the burial of Yasser Arafat and later that year traveled to Southeast Asia to cover the tsunami disaster.
CNN’s Hurricane Katrina coverage earned a George Foster Peabody award, and its tsunami coverage earned an Alfred I. duPont award. This year, the NAACP gave O’Brien its President’s Award. In 2001, People Magazine named O’Brien one of its “50 Most Beautiful” people of the year. In 2006, O’Brien was given the Mickey Leland Humanitarian Award from the National Association of Minorities in Cable.
She is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. O’Brien is a graduate of Harvard University.
Senior Convocation will be at noon on May 26, the weekend of Commencement, and will take place in Schoellkopf Stadium. In addition to O’Brien’s address, Cornell President David J. Skorton and Edvard Gumbs ’07, senior class president, will speak at Convocation. The event is open to graduating students and their families only. The Class of 2007 will also present its class gift to the University at the event.
The Convocation Committee will be officially announcing the speaker today at 4:45 p.m. in a Student Assembly meeting in the Straight Memorial Hall.
Previous Convocation speakers included Martin Luther King III, Gen. Wesley Clark and former U.S. President Bill Clinton.
Booooooooo. Somehow, they
Booooooooo. Somehow, they managed to pick a more disappointing speaker than MLK III.
WHY CAN'T WE GET A SPEAKER THAT IS INTERESTING!
How about getting a speaker that people actually know and respect instead of some obscure person?!
Yuck Yuck Yuck
Completely worthless speaker. I love how she doesn't even have enough achievements to fill a full article.
Oh wait, winning a "People" magazine poll SIX YEARS AGO is pretty academically valuable.
I love her!!!
I can't wait!!!
This is Pathetic
Soleded O'Brien spoke at my high school to a bunch of 14 yr olds a few years ago and now she's my commencement speaker!? If she were at least an interesting journalist like Anderson Cooper who actually investigates stuff and goes to interesting places, I could tolerate a news person. But she sits in a studio and reads a teleprompter, thats her job. This is outrageously pathetic and offensive that Cornell and Skorton think she's at all appropriate to speak here. It's honestly not worth my parents gas money or the ridiculous price of hotels in ithaca for my parents to bother coming to commencement for this. I hope Skorton realizes what an awful decision this is. If these are the types of people he draws, I'm glad I'm graduating now.
who????
who????
At least you had Wes...
Wes Clark must have been an awesome speaker to have. Just recently saw him speak and he really get's to you.
I don't really know enough
I don't really know enough about her to make judegment as to whether or not she'll be a good speaker...but i will say this, President Skorton in this process has been extremely unhelpful. For the kind of institution that cornell believes itself to be, why couldn't we get a speaker of greater renown. From what I've heard, the students on the committee worked hard to bring a good speaker and they had several very renown candidate individuals, but Skorton shot down every name they brought up, so they were left with very few options. I am beginning to doubt all Skorton's talk of being open and helpful for students. This event is for the students and parents..shouldn't Skorton respect our choices?
and i thought the speaker at
and i thought the speaker at last year's commencement was bad...it is disappointing that as i come back to cornell this year for my sibling's graduation i am once again faced with a lackluster commencement speaker, as i was last year when i graduated. for the type of institution that cornell proclaims itself to be, you would think we could get better speakers, or at least more inspirational ones. what are her real accomplishments? how does she really inspire students, and specifically graduates? i have seen her speak once to a group of about 15 women...she could not even get a larger turn out than that, and now she is speaking at an ivy league commencement? absolutely unacceptable, really.
Retardedddddddddd
We go from Bill Clinton (my freshman year) to Soleded O'brien? Are you kidding me? It's effing pathetic. At least we'll get a big name that everyone will enjoy for Slope Day. Oh, wait we already got TI. This school is going downhill.
April Fool?
That Cornell is so desperate as to ask a newsreader to speak at its commencement is profoundly disappointing. Why not a professional circus clown instead of an amateur script reader?
Harvard has Bill Gates speaking, and Cornell does this? As a parent who has just spent $230,000 in pretax income for my son's education there, I am disgusted.
I assume she will speak about diversity?
Well, at least this is
Well, at least this is better than Columbia; they have a washed up actor from Party of 5. Still, that is a really low standard.
I cannot believe my parents are cutting short their bi-annual vacation to come hear a nobody. How on earth is she supposed to be inspiring to the entire audience? Great, she is a multi-ethnic woman in a largely white male dominated profession who has achieved some level of success. Such is commendable. I might even go see her if she was giving a Friday night talk at the Statler. But, is she a person with a story or with credentials that are noteworthy enough to merit speaking at one of the greatest educational institutions in the world? I don't think so. Presidents, CEO's, Supreme Court justices, ambassadors are traditional qualified individuals. If they wanted a newsperson, what about Walter Cronkike or Cornell's own Keith Olberman. Heck, if they wanted a female newsperson, what about Barbara Walters?
As the most noteworthy thing in her background is her success despite ethnic and gender barriers, the decision to bring her almost certainly has something to do with the ongoing diversity initiative. I have had it up to here with all of this talk about diversity. If they want to solve "diversity issues," give us better financial aid rather than bring second rate news anchors and building diversity arches.
I know a few people on the commencement speaker committee and I just cannot fathom that they would nominate her as a first, second, eight, or tenth choice. This must be the result of the stonewalling that was in that OP-ED piece a few weeks ago. Skorton loses a great deal of my respect we could not get a better speaker because of his obstinacy.
Honestly who cares? I don't
Honestly who cares? I don't even remember who spoke at my highschool graduation. Stop bitching
Re: Dismayed Parent - you spent money on an education. You can go to the learning annex if you want high class speakers and don't care about quality of education.