Students earning diplomas from Maryland's colleges and universities this year are being sent off into the world with words of wisdom from the state's retiring U.S. senator, a congressman running to replace him, the director of the National Institutes of Health, the host of a nationally televised political roundtable and the vice president of the United States.
Members of Goucher College's Class of 2006, however, will be treated today to insights from the bass player of Spinal Tap.
The featured speaker is comedian, actor and author Harry Shearer, perhaps best known as the voices of malevolent business executive C. Montgomery Burns and his geeky, yes-man assistant, Waylon Smithers, on The Simpsons.
He will appear on the Towson campus two years after the college's president interviewed children's author and illustrator Maurice Sendak in lieu of a traditional commencement address, and a decade after an impromptu graduation day singalong with television's kindly Mr. Rogers.
It wasn't always this way at Goucher. But the school is by no means the first institution to take a lighter approach to the sometimes-stodgy affair of college commencement. Tom Hanks, Jon Stewart, Billy Joel and Goldie Hawn have addressed new graduates in recent years.
And veteran funnyman Bill Cosby is a regular this time of year on college campuses, having spoken at at least 19 graduations, including those at Goucher, the University of Maryland, College Park and the Johns Hopkins University.
"It's an experience for the people who do it. It's a change of pace, and oftentimes they're rewarded with an honorary degree," said Jason M. Breslow, who maintains a database of college graduation speakers for The Chronicle of Higher Education. "For the university, it's great for them, because it brings attention to them. And I think it's probably fun for the students, as well."
For Shearer, today's commencement provides an opportunity to address an audience that grew up with The Simpsons and which some educators predicted would be corrupted by the cartoon.
"These," he quipped, "are my children."
"There are those in the political universe who use commencement addresses as kind of a warm-up to a political campaign, and students might feel justified in being less than delighted at being used as props or extras in that particular show," Shearer said in a telephone interview this week. "This day is about them, it's not about me. ... I'm not running for anything."
