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Star Wars Takes Over Harvard Commencement

Posted by Zonk on from the my-brother-made-people-flap-like-a-chicken dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Harvard University celebrated its 356th Commencement on Thursday. It is tradition at Harvard is to have an undergraduate deliver a Latin Salutatory address. This year's speaker, Charles Joseph McNamara, delivered an address all about Star Wars in Latin! TheForce.net has a write-up of the event, and the speaker was really hilarious. He apparently doesn't like Star Wars that much, but it's still awesome. The video is available online, and you too can see him do a Yoda voice and make light-saber motions ... in front of over 30,000 people. The speech is under "Morning Exercises" on the Harvard site. The Latin Oration begins at about 1:09:30."

3 of 138 comments (clear)

  1. "stuff that matters"??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    now i know why my submissions get turned down...

    to be fair, this is getting old...I'm a huge SW fan, a fan of anyone who can lecture in latin, and I can't find anything about this submission remotely interesting, insightful, or of news value to nerds.

    In fact a lot of stuff on Firehose that gets shot down just due to too much input and a filtering system that is possibly becoming obsolete could have replaced this article.

    1. Re:"stuff that matters"??? by WannaBeGeekGirl · · Score: 1, Informative

      to be fair, this is getting old...I'm a huge SW fan, a fan of anyone who can lecture in latin, and I can't find anything about this submission remotely interesting, insightful, or of news value to nerds.

      In fact a lot of stuff on Firehose that gets shot down just due to too much input and a filtering system that is possibly becoming obsolete could have replaced this article. apologies for the redundant, I meant to post non-AC but clicked the damn PA checkbox in advertantly when aiming for Submit. I think my name should be on this so you can do to my karma whattever you wish to.
      --
      ~WBGG~ "And I'm so sad like a good book I can't put this Day Back a sorta fairytale with you" ~Tori Amos
  2. Re:If I were a graduate I would be pissed by rkent · · Score: 2, Informative

    That was all part of the joke - in the program distributed to family & guests, it didn't SAY "John Harvard, Jedi Knight," it said "Latin Salutatory: Iohannes Harvard, Eques Iediensis." And then all the student programs had an insert with the transcript and an English translation. So we (the graduates) got to read along and laugh at all the dumb jokes (he called Yale the death star, yuk yuk), thus appearing to understand Latin like the good little Hahvahd sophisticates we're presumed to be. It wasn't "stupid," it was just a bit of a light inside joke.

    BTW, can any other slashdotters who attended in a non-student capacity verify that you didn't get the translation? It was definitely an insert, and not part of the regular program, but obviously I can't be sure who got them and who didn't.