A front page story in the May 14 edition of the Wall Street Journal features philosophy professor John Sullivan, this year's commencement speaker and Elon's backup since 1980. Details and story link...
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The story, by Journal reporter Daniel Golden, looks at the contingency plans colleges and universities make for commencement speakers who fail to show, either through illness, accident or travel difficulties. Golden spent a day on the Elon campus conducting interviews for the story. Sullivan will deliver his speech this year, filling in for Mae Jemison, Elon’s originally scheduled speaker who cancelled in April due to a family illness.
Excerpts from the story:
ELON, N.C.–John Sullivan has prepared an eloquent address for Elon University’s commencement exercises almost every year since 1980, when many of this month’s graduates were born.
But nobody has ever heard these words. In all likelihood, nobody ever will. Come commencement, Prof. Sullivan sits quietly in the faculty section, bedecked in his robe and a ribbon signifying the endowed teaching chair he holds. Inside the book he brings to the ceremony to ward off boredom, he folds his speech — just in case.
“I always think, maybe the speaker’s plane will be late, or he’ll keel over on the platform, and I’ll come rushing up to save the day, like in the old movies,” he says.
The 65-year-old religious scholar is the unofficial dean of the nation’s standby commencement speakers — little-known fixtures of higher education who tackle a thankless job.
Elon’s contingency planning for commencement is unsurpassed. The private university, with about 4,300 students, assigns substitutes not just for the commencement speaker but for the organist, the chaplain, the student vocalist, the faculty marshal and readers of the graduates’ names. It even has backup diplomas.
“Prof. Sullivan maintains he’s glad to help the university and doesn’t mind just waiting in the wings. Still, he refuses to show the speeches to colleagues, friends, or his wife, Gregg, cultivating an air of mystery about them. “It’s the one thing in our marriage we haven’t shared,” he says.