My Graduation address
To the University of Arizona Graduating Class of 2024
Before I start I’d like to ask you a favor. Please check under your seats to see if there’s a spare million or two dollars under them. We’re still looking for that money.
No? Nothing? OK. Let’s begin.
First, thank you President Robbins for those inspiring words. I’ve never seen anyone read a speech off the back of an airline ticket before. You will be missed. Every time a graduate plays Trivial Pursuit and struggles to remember your name you’ll be missed.
I’d like to thank the hundreds of University of Arizona Vice Presidents who took time away from doing whatever it is you do to be here with us today. I figured out who you were when I didn’t see “Mormon Tabernacle Choir” on the program.
I know your experience here at the University of Arizona has prepared you for success in the job market as you compete against your fellow graduates. And your faculty. Which we unfortunately will have to lay off due to a tiny little nothing overblown $177 million dollar accounting boo boo.
Those of you graduating from the Eller School of Business Management, with Accounting MBAs, may be interested to hear we are looking for a brand new University of Arizona President with your skills. We are particularly interested in you if you understand basic accounting, something which is way over our heads here and might as well be astrobiological quantum mechanics. So if you don’t have to take off your shoes to count to twenty please see me after the program.
Those student athletes who are graduating today we thank both of you for your academic achievement.We thank you for participating in our program and representing our school honorably. Know your arrest mugshots hang in a place of honor in our Hall of Fame. I want you to remember one thing, if you remember anything, once you get that fat contract and that is this: on the line of your endowment check that says “Pay to the Order of” make certain you spell “University of Arizona” correctly.
We’ve all had our ups and downs at the University this year like any major academic institution that puts academics last with the same level of pride we do.
Some people joke that your degree is worth less than the diploma paper it’s printed on. That is not true. It’s worth roughly the same as the paper it’s printed on and that is because we saved a fortune this year on diploma printing costs by printing your thousands of diplomas on the back of the IOUs from the University of Arizona Athletic Department our housecleaning staff found laying around in President Robbin’s office
.
If you follow the news you’ve heard the Board of Regents has assembled a committee of 18 head hunters to search for the next University President to be hired and promptly fired and then beheaded. Of course the Regents would make fine candidates themselves, having functioned without heads above their neckties and pearls for years.
In the meantime it is my hope one of you dynamos in our Biological and Bioscience Programs considers studying the possibility of cloning Michael Crow. Bear down, Arizona, bear down.
You’re here because you’ve done the hard work. With determination and grit you wrote the AI prompts for your finals, proving to us that you are among the finest plagiarists to ever graduate from this prestigious university this year. And let me take a moment here to give credit where it is due. I want to thank ChatGPT for its assistance writing this commencement speech.
Here at the University of Arizona, we pride ourselves on being a non-partisan institution infiltrated by only the finest right wing think tanks who bought their way into our colleges with financial favors. Let’s hear it for all the nutty billionaires who value educating we educators and all those foundations with the words freedom or free enterprise in them.
To those of you graduating with a journalism degree all I can say is the crew that will be putting away the folding chairs you’re sitting on when this is over is always looking to hire.
I love the history of this great institution. In the beginning, when Arizona was a territory, it was decided by our legislature that Phoenix would get the legislature and the state mental hospital, two institutions that remained wholly indistinguishable and that Tucson would get the university.
This very university that you’re graduating from was created over 100 years ago when two gamblers and a saloon keeper donated the land in exchange for season tickets to the very first football game where Arizona whipped the Gila Bend Hoot Owls,100 to 6.
The university that began thanks to two gamblers promises you graduates today that your odds of landing a full time job with health insurance are nearly as good as winning a cool million on a nickel slot machine in Gila Bend.
There couldn’t be a better time to be a student at the University of Arizona except when I was a student University of Arizona, when it was affordable and the classrooms were smaller, but aside from that, these are your glory days.
My advice to you. Invest in solar power. Move to the Arctic Circle. I can’t remember the third thing because my generation legalized marijuana, perhaps our greatest achievement, next to creating Lululemon, the Hydroflask and Spanx.
I’m sure when you leave this campus you’ll be thinking never again. Never again will you have to pay parking tickets this expensive. Unless you find work in Manhattan as a broker.
To our planetary and lunar sciences graduates we say thank you for taking us boldly into the future. And to our legislature I say thank you for taking us back to 1864.
And we’re cool about your student loan debt. We know you’ll pay it off as soon as Hell freezes over.
After graduating if you are inclined to return to the University of Arizona think about signing up for our online International-Pan- Global-Interplanetary-Ambassadors College at www.robbins.boondoggle.edu.
We accept bitcoin and wooden nickels.
I know I’m speaking for all the parents and grandparents here today when I say we have one dream for you and that dream is that you will fix the planet we screwed up and that is why dinner at Olive Garden is on us tonight and it is our hope that including the tip will make us even Steven.
In closing, enjoy your wild graduation parties this weekend, don’t drink and drive. And congratulations.
Coming Soon:
June 26: Drag Queen Power Hour LD17 Fundraiser
A matinee and evening performance of the Drag Queen Power Hour on Wednesday, June 26, 2024, at Unscrewed Theatre, 4500 E. Speedway Blvd. Featuring raffle prizes including "Lunch with David Fitzsimmons” Here is a link to more information regarding the event:
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/drag-queen-matinee-event
June 15: I’m a Storyteller
For “20/20 Vision, Looking Forward, Looking Back” Saturday, June 15, 2-4 pm at the Screening Room, 127 E. Congress. I’ll be one LGBTQ ally telling my story among many storytellers celebrating the 20th Anniversary of Senior Pride. More to come soon.
Coming this Sunday:
My next post, “The sound of Mother’s day”
Excellent column today, Fitz! Your toons are especially apt. What a sad, sad state of affairs it is that this state cannot even manage their land grant university. Thank you.
I am a U of A graduate. Feeling you are so “right on” about it all! It’s only gotten worse because of unbelievable greed. So revealing, about the our university and our legislative Arizona government! What a time we live in. Thank you for your insight and honesty!! Please continue your great work and service to our community.