Student Union
- By Pete Musto
Advice from Graduation Speakers: Eat a Good Breakfast
This time of year, many college and university graduates sit patiently through long graduation ceremonies, fanning themselves in the heat and waiting for the main event: a movie star, celebrity, politician or world leader to deliver words of wisdom.
It's graduation season, meaning many colleges and universities feature speakers who are well-known or well-respected for their accomplishments. The speaker's role is to offer graduates advice about launching into the world.
This year's speeches have been delivered by people such as Chadwick Boseman of the Black Panther superhero movie, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine LaGarde, former U.S. Secretary of State and oil executive Rex Tillerson, and America's wealthiest African-American woman and celebrity, Oprah Winfrey.
"You need to know this: Your job is not always going to fulfill you," Winfrey said to graduates at the University of Southern California Annenberg School of Communications and Journalism.
"There will be some days that you just might be bored. Other days you may not feel like going to work at all," she said. "Go anyway, and remember that your job is not who you are. It's just what you are doing on the way to who you will become. With every remedial chore, every boss who takes credit for your ideas — that is going to happen — look for the lessons, because the lessons are always there."
She also advised students to "eat a good breakfast."
Tillerson spoke to graduates at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia, telling them to be grateful for the people who helped them succeed, such as parents and teachers.
He also talked about democracy, transparency and truth.
"It is only by a fierce defense of the truth and a common set of facts that we create the conditions for a democratic free society," Tillerson said. "If our leaders seek to conceal the truth or we as people become accepting of alternative realities that are no longer grounded in facts, then we as American citizens are on a pathway to relinquishing our freedom."
Boseman, star of the blockbuster 2018 Black Panther film, spoke at Howard University in Washington, D.C. — the school from which he graduated, known as a graduate's alma mater. (Former U.S. President Barack Obama spoke to Howard grads in 2016.)
Howard is a leader among historically black colleges and universities, or HBCU, in the U.S., but was recently involved in a corruption scandal involving student aid money. Boseman referred to the scandal and other problems facing students, especially African-Americans.
"Many of you will leave Howard and enter systems and institutions that have a history of discrimination and marginalization," he said.
But, Boseman suggested, those problems can make them better people.
"I don't know what your future is," he said. "But if you're willing to take the harder way … the one with more failures at first than successes . . . then you will not regret it. … Remember the struggles along the way are only meant to shape you for your purpose."
Winfrey encouraged students to vote and take action.
"Pick a problem, any problem, and do something about it," she said. "Because to somebody who's hurting, something is everything."
IMF's Lagarde asked graduates at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California, to look further into the future to consider what effect their next choices and actions will have.
She asked the graduates to think about how different the world is now compared to 10 years ago, and how different it may be in 10 years.
"What kind of country, what kind of world, will you help build?" she asked. "What values will you respect? What will drive your life and the lives of others? Ten years from now, when the class of 2028 stands here and prepares to graduate, what will you have done to help them?"
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Tips for first-year international students in the US
Book your flights right away, get a U.S. phone plan, make sure you have linens for your dorm and attend orientation – that’s some of the advice international students have for first-year college students coming from abroad.
U.S. News & World Report compiled helpful tips for students studying in the United States for the first time. (July 2024)
Survey: Social integration, career prep are important to international students
A recent survey of international students in the United States found that before starting school, they were concerned about personal safety, making friends and feeling homesick.
Inside Higher Ed reports that international students want specialized orientations, peer connections, career preparation and job placement to help make their college experiences successful. (July 2024)
US advisory council ends Nigeria visit, signs student exchange deal
Members of a U.S. presidential advisory council have approved a student exchange deal between an American college and a Nigerian university as part of the council's effort to strengthen collaboration on education, health, entrepreneurship and development between Africa and Africans living abroad.
The council also visited a health facility supported by the United States Agency for International Development in the capital.
Nigerian authorities and visitors chatted with members of the U.S President's Advisory Council on African Diaspora Engagement as they toured a healthcare facility in Karu, a suburb of Abuja, on the last day of the council's three-day visit to Abuja and Lagos.
The facility is one of many supported by the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, to improve the management of childhood illnesses, family planning, immunization and delivery.
The tour was part of the council's effort to promote African diaspora-led investments in technology entrepreneurship, education and healthcare delivery.
"They're doing a phenomenal job there, it really gave us a sense of what the healthcare system is in Nigeria," said Deniece Laurent-Mantey, executive director of the advisory council. "This is our first trip as a council to the continent and we chose Nigeria for a reason — the diaspora in Nigeria is very active, very influential, and they're really a source of strength when it comes to our U.S.-Africa policy. And so for us coming to Nigeria was very intentional."
The council was created by President Joe Biden in September to improve collaboration between Africa and its diaspora in terms of economic and social development.
Akila Udoji, manager of the Primary Healthcare Centre of Karu, said officials in Nigeria were pleased that the council members were able to visit.
"We're happy that they have seen what the money they have given to us to work with has been used to do, because they have been able to assist us in capacity-building, trainings, equipment supply and the makeover of the facility," Udoji said.
Earlier, the council signed a deal for a student exchange program between Spelman College in the southern U.S. city of Atlanta and Nigeria's University of Lagos.
Laurent-Mantey said education exchanges are one of the council's top priorities.
"In Lagos, we had the president of Spelman College — she's also a member of our council — she signed an agreement with the University of Lagos to further education exchange programs in STEM and creative industries between those two universities," Laurent-Mantey said. "And I think for us it's very important, because Spelman College is a historically Black university, and so here we are promoting the importance of collaboration between African Americans and Africans."
In March, the advisory council adopted its first set of recommendations for the U.S. president, including the student exchange initiative, advocating for more U.S. government support for Africa, climate-focused initiatives, and improving U.S. visa access for Africans.
The council met with Nigerian health and foreign affairs officials during the visit before leaving the country on Wednesday.
American Academy of the Arts College announces closure
The American Academy of Art College in Chicago announced it would be closing after 101 years of preparing students for careers in art and illustration.
WTTW news reported that like other art colleges, the academy saw enrollment drop after the pandemic, and officials made the decision to close the college last month. (July 2024)
5 killed, dozens injured in clashes over Bangladesh jobs quota system
At least 5 people were killed and dozens injured in two separate incidents in Bangladesh as violence continued Tuesday on university campuses in the nation's capital and elsewhere over a government jobs quota system, local media reports said quoting officials.
At least three of the dead were students and one was a pedestrian, the media reports said. Another man who died in Dhaka remained unidentified.
The deaths were reported Tuesday after overnight violence at a public university near Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka. The violence involved members of a pro-government student body and other students, when police fired tear gas and charged the protesters with batons during the clashes, which spread at Jahangir Nagar University in Savar, outside Dhaka, according to students and authorities.
Protesters have been demanding an end to a quota reserved for family members of veterans who fought in Bangladesh's war of independence in 1971, which allows them to take up 30% of governmental jobs.
They argue that quota appointments are discriminatory and should be merit-based. Some said the current system benefits groups supporting Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Some Cabinet ministers criticized the protesters, saying they played on students' emotions.
The Bengali-language Prothom Alo daily newspaper reported that one person died in Dhaka and three others, including a pedestrian, were killed after they suffered injuries during violence in Chattogram, a southeastern district, on Tuesday.
Prothom Alo and other media reports also said that a 22-year-old protester died in the northern district of Rangpur.
Details of the casualties could not be confirmed immediately.
While job opportunities have expanded in Bangladesh's private sector, many find government jobs stable and lucrative. Each year, some 3,000 such jobs open up to nearly 400,000 graduates.
Hasina said Tuesday that war veterans — commonly known as "freedom fighters" — should receive the highest respect for their sacrifice in 1971 regardless of their current political ideologies.
"Abandoning the dream of their own life, leaving behind their families, parents and everything, they joined the war with whatever they had," she said during an event at her office in Dhaka.
Protesters gathered in front of the university's official residence of the vice chancellor early Tuesday when violence broke out. Demonstrators accused the Bangladesh Chhatra League, a student wing of Hasina's ruling Awami League party, of attacking their "peaceful protests." According to local media reports, police and the ruling party-backed student wing attacked the protesters.
But Abdullahil Kafi, a senior police official, told the country's leading English-language newspaper Daily Star that they fired tear gas and "blank rounds" as protesters attacked the police. He said up to 15 police officers were injured.
More than 50 people were treated at Enam Medical College Hospital near Jahangir Nagar University as the violence continued for hours, said Ali Bin Solaiman, a medical officer of the hospital. He said at least 30 of them suffered pellet wounds.
On Monday, violence also spread at Dhaka University, the country's leading public university, as clashes gripped the campus in the capital. More than 100 students were injured in the clashes, police said.
On Tuesday, protesters blocked railways and some highways across the country, and in Dhaka, they halted traffic in many areas as they vowed to continue demonstrating until the demands were met.
Local media said police forces were spread across the capital to safeguard the peace.
Swapon, a protester and student at Dhaka University who gave only his first name, said they want the "rational reformation of the quota scheme." He said that after studying for six years, if he can't find a job, "it will cause me and my family to suffer."
Protesters say they are apolitical, but leaders of the ruling parties accused the opposition of using the demonstrations for political gains.
A ruling party-backed student activist, who refused to give his name, told The Associated Press that the protesters with the help of "goons" of the opposition's Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Jamaat-e-Islami party vandalized their rooms at the student dormitories near the Curzon Hall of Dhaka University.
The family-of-the-veterans quota system was halted following a court order after mass student protests in 2018. But last month, Bangladesh's High Court nulled the decision to reinstate the system once more, angering scores of students and triggering protests.
Last week, the Supreme Court suspended the High Court's order for four weeks and the chief justice asked protesting students to return to their classes, saying the court would issue a decision in four weeks.
However, the protests have continued daily, halting traffic in Dhaka.
The quota system also reserves government jobs for women, disabled people and ethnic minority groups, but students have protested against only the veterans system.
Hasina maintained power in an election in January that was again boycotted by the country's main opposition party and its allies due to Hasina's refusal to step down and hand over power to a caretaker government to oversee the election.
Her party favors keeping the quota for the families of the 1971 war heroes after her Awami League party, under the leadership of her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, led the independence war with the help of India. Rahman was assassinated along with most of his family members in a military coup in 1975.
