Every year students around the country prepare for the most anticipated event of the year: Graduation. Between the chaos of getting your cap and gown, making sure your parents booked their hotel, and dealing with the emotions that come with the end of college, the one thing that typically cheers people up is hearing an inspiring speech at the commencement ceremony. But for one school, that didn’t quite happen as planned.
This past Saturday, former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg took the stage at the graduation ceremony for the University of Michigan, and it was not well received.
Bloomberg faced extensive backlash on social media, and some booing in person, after he made some comments against some common college vocabulary during his speech.
According to USA Today College, he said, “The fact that some university boards and administrations now bow to pressure groups and shield students from these ideas through safe spaces, code words and trigger warnings is, in my view, a terrible mistake. The whole purpose of college is to learn how to deal with difficult situations, not to run away from them.”
Immediately students began tweeting out their outrage over this comment.
“Never be afraid to do what’s right even if it’s not popular” but also “demanding safe spaces is stupid” says Bloomberg #MGoGrad
— aliza (@aalizaa) April 30, 2016
Bloomberg also hit back at microaggressions, saying “A microaggression is exactly that: micro. But in a macro sense, one of the most dangerous places on a college campus is the so-called safe space, because it creates a false impression that we can isolate ourselves from those who hold different views.”
This apparently led to even more boos and angry tweets, for good reason.
Wow I was enjoying graduating until Michael Bloomberg started talking #MGoGrad
— Kristy Landis (@Gingersnap_83) April 30, 2016
Based on the reaction from the students during his speech and after, I’m guessing that Bloomberg probably wishes he had someone proofread that speech for him. If only someone had mentioned to him that a commencement speech may not be the best place to start a discussion about whether or not microagressions are an issue. Oops!