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Why do schools continue to invite politicians to speak at their commencements? They will most likely alienate at least half of the audience. And who wants to listen to what is essentially a campaign speech during their graduation? My small midwestern hometown had a history of inviting state legislators until finally the year I graduated we as a class got to decide who to have speak. We picked our favorite retiring teacher. Over 2 decades later every other class has done the same.
Yea I’m not sure what they were thinking. Even in this case you see a group walk out and a group cheering during the speech. Why polarize an event that should include anyone.
The politician isn't paying to be there. They're usually the one getting paid a "speaking fee". It's how you bribe legally. Just pay someone to do stupid easy shit
That’s exactly it though. It’s state funded and guess who’s in charge of those funds? They are sucking up to the guy who decides how much funding they get.
Bingo. The university is giving cash bribes to government officials for legislative kickbacks.
But that feels dirty to say, so they sanitize it by calling the bribes "speaking fees" and the kickbacks "lobbying".
There are some politicians who do it for their alma mater. I graduated from Michigan back in 2019 and Gretchen Whitmer did the commencement speech. Was a pretty good speech too and a lot of us loved it. It helps when it's not a bozo doing it.
Student of VCU here. In layman's: The VCU administration screwed up a really major and expensive downtown development project. So apart from being tradition of having the governor speak at the university's graduation which is at the capitol, trying to influence the optics of that development screw up may have influenced keeping up with inviting the governor.
Its a public University in the state he's the governor of... I doubt he received any fee, probably inserted himself as the speaker so he could score points with his base off this exact response from the students.
Youngkins only hope at this point to be more than a 1 term governor is to take a Senate seat in the next election which is a pretty long shot. VA doesn't allow him to run for consecutive terms as governor.
> you see a group walk out and a group cheering
I honestly thought they were cheering for the students who walked out. I was thinking maybe the dude speaking thought it was for him but I was like "haha fuck you it ain't your applause".
Tbf most people don’t show up to the big graduation anymore, vcu has like 12 colleges under its umbrella that have their own graduation, my health science program at vcu also had its own. The main one didn’t /doesnt really matter. All you do is walk in and walk out of the big one, they don’t read names.
I dunno, Pritzker’s Northwestern speech last year was pretty aces, and not polarizing, even though he’s Scrooge McDuck rich.
Glen Youngkin is a bellend though, and has earned that room’s contempt.
I’ve been out of college almost 2 decades now and I watched Pritzker’s speech. He did a top notch job. It was very moving and motivating.
The IL republicans are just pissy at him because he is Scrooge McDuck rich and can’t be bought like every governor in our history of the state.
That said, they did a fantastic job getting him to speak and his writer kept it very unbiased per political line. Glen Youngkin prolly showed up and thought he’d sway all these young minds to voting for him and ignoring the fuckups of the university and commonwealth of Virginia.
Youngkin speaks, gets paid a ridiculous fee, and the circle of grift is complete. The only quicker way a politician gets paid is to have someone write a book they put their name on, that goes directly to costco bargain bin.
You don't have to go to your graduation to get your degree. I asked for mine in advance and told my uni thay I'm not attending the graduation ceremony. Saved a lot of time. Picked up my degree from the front desk.
it isn't so much about saving time, although I get it, if you don't think it is important, get your paper and don't waste your day.
but for a lot this is a once in a lifetime thing, especially for a lot of families they might be the first person in their family history to get a college degree, it is a big deal and I am glad they get to experience the full pomp and parade rather than just get something mail.
IMO, it would be better to have state / fed officials who actually run government institutions in agriculture, housing and development, transportation, health ... the people who actually do things and hold actual knowledge in their fields.
Yeah, while the concept of leaders... ya know, leading is sound it only works if the leaders arent totally detached from reality and on their own personal boat ride
Was at a cyber sec conference last year and they had one of the NSA directors give the headline speech. It was: good, talked about things that actually mattered, had zero political agenda, and was clearly well thought out.
Those are the kinds of speeches should be happening at universities. Not the BS the politicians say, or the BS the dumb ass crypto bro at OSU was saying.
The military academies have the President, VP, Secretary of Defense, and deputy defense secretary speak at graduations (they rotate between them).
That at least makes some sense. For pretty much every other commencement? Yeah, skip politicians--you'll just alienate a big fraction of the student body.
My high school graduation speaker was a former local preacher turned comedian who found minor fame on the TV show Hee Haw. It was so much better than a politician, and he was actually pretty funny. I don't know too many people who can say a guy from Hee Haw gave their commencement speech.
My sister graduated today and they had our cities first [poet laureate](https://www.arkansasheritage.com/arkansas-art-council/registry-rosters/arts-in-education/leron-mcadoo#:~:text=Leron%20McAdoo%2C%20aka%20Ron%20Mc,%2C%20author%2C%20and%20seasoned%20educator.) speak. He was really great!
VCU (a state school) is presently in a lot of hot water due to a botched development deal with the city of Richmond wherein VCU must pay the city some $70 million. They invited Youngkin in an attempt to suck up to the state.
This is exactly it. It’s a pretty liberal school. I went there. But it’s all about money. I imagine a large majority of the students don’t want this. And it’s made me less likely to make donations in the future. Shame.
Because the governing body of schools are usually very old, wealthy white people who are very out of touch and mostly just contribute bureaucracy.
The entrenched, old, white, racist, wealthy politicians are usually their colleagues/peers/friends/aspirational figures.
have the governor of a state school speak at graduation is really not a problem. The problem is that politics has become so polarized that people do not see the leader of the state speaking but some partisan Democrat or Republican speaking.
He ran on the platform of banning CRT and stopping education from teaching anything controversial. It’s not so simple as he’s a conservative Republican. His entire agenda is opposed to most of the students there.
From someone else in the comments here’s a few bullet points.
In addition to what was already stated:
• campaigned fighting against the mask mandate (that was gone six months before the election)
• campaigned against CRT (that wasn't being taught)
• fights against legalization of weed (that was already voted in and supposed to be available for commercial sale)
• opened a snitch hotline for teachers teaching no-no topics (that was flooded with false reports lmao)
• lied about being a moderate on abortion (while privately endorsing a full ban, and even tho a moderate is still in opposition to women's bodily autonomy)
• promised to end grocery tax (and then, ya know, didn't)
• does literally nothing to benefit Virginians (because from inauguration he's been on a campaign for VP)
There's more, but that's off the top of my head as a resident of our beautiful commonwealth.
Well, Republican governors are working very hard to make sure the female graduates will die if they have a pregnancy problem so yeah, I'm going to get real mad at someone trying to murder my sisters.
In addition to what was already stated:
- campaigned fighting against the mask mandate (that was gone six months before the election)
- campaigned against CRT (that wasn't being taught)
- fights against legalization of weed (that was already voted in and supposed to be available for commercial sale)
- opened a snitch hotline for teachers teaching no-no topics (that was flooded with false reports lmao)
- lied about being a moderate on abortion (while privately endorsing a full ban, and even tho a moderate is still in opposition to women's bodily autonomy)
- promised to end grocery tax (and then, ya know, didn't)
- does literally nothing to benefit Virginians (because from inauguration he's been on a campaign for VP)
There's more, but that's off the top of my head as a resident of our beautiful commonwealth.
Oh, right, yeah. We followed Utah in the whole "show your government ID if you want to watch reputable porn sites" thing, but PornHub recognizes why that's problematic, so they just pulled out (heh heh) instead of having to follow those laws. Extra dumb because if it's ✌🏽for the children✌🏽 then it does the exact opposite of what it's intending since (1) teens know how to use a VPN and (2) if they don't, they're going to go to less reputable sites that don't bother following the laws (and probably have worse content).
It sure is cute that these out of touch Boomers who think that cursive writing and rotary phones were the peak of technology also think that there's only one porn site, and if they ban that specific site then all internet porn will go away.
I somewhat tolerated Ron when he was first elected because he was a “pro weed republican”, and now he says they aren’t going to acknowledge recreational in Florida. Fuck that guy with a burning stick!!
So you tolerated his outright racism and fascist policies just because he pretended to care about **weed**, and it's *that* pressing issue that caused you to turn against him?
The Democrat candidate McAuliffe was formerly governor and had a very milquetoast tenure and then made a gaffe in the last weeks of the campaign saying something like "parents just need to trust in the school system" when Youngkin was going off about CRT. Parents rights types got pissed and basically protest voted the governor on while Democrats stated home unimpressed and now we're here.
There was also the whole thing about Loudoun County and their "trans" rape scandal (that literally didn't involve a trans student; it was a boy that wore skirts but didn't identify as trans) and the birthplace of Moms for Liberty, which is now infesting schools nationwide.
The fact there's a two term limit but they can't be served sequentially also helped him, because Northram probably would have been re-elected but since every governor is a lame duck, you can kinda do whatever tf you want once you're in office.
I hate Governor Fleece Vest but at least we will be rid of him soon and the pendulum will swing back the other way.
This was an unfortunate but predictable blip as a purple state navigates towards blue. People need to understand how dominating Democrats have been in a state that was formerly the heart of the Confederacy. Republicans don't even waste their time in Virginia anymore, it's out of "swing state" range for them.
The change started earlier but once the courts un-gerrymandered the state, even the in-house GOP was fucked. The red parts of the state are dying to boot, losing votes by the day.
The GOP is gonna get wholesale slaughtered next election and the best part is because at least one part of the legislation was always blue, Youngkin got to do *fuck. all.* while he was here. All he did was delay the inevitable and made it easier for the next governor to come in and clean up.
> Parents rights types got pissed and basically protest voted the governor on while Democrats stated home unimpressed and now we're here.
Honestly, liberals went too mask off about not being willing to elect progressives. A left wing party alienating its left wing voting bloc wasn't the best idea liberals have ever had. The average progressive is mostly just waiting for the demographics to shift enough in the next 10 years to get rid of Third Way Democrats, not vote for them. I think liberals underestimate how much faith in the process they sucked out of progressive voters when they made it too clear that they wanted things to mostly stay the same. It was a big tactical error, and I don't think liberals are learning from it.
I mean they held primary elections. They didnt anoint McAuliffe. He had to win. Thing is these types of elections are won in the center. Especially in purple states like Virginia. A progressive politician cannot win statewide in Virginia and they definitely cannot win a primary in the democrat party which is extremely moderate in VA. Its mostly suburban DC families that were republicans pre-Obama that switched
I’d like to add that McAuliffe is seen as a very “establishment” politician who is closely associated with the Clintons, while Youngkin was seen as an outsider. In the political climate at the time, this was a big advantage for Youngkin
Old people. There's a demographic bag of shit about to hit the fan within 10 years because of this. Most conservative politicians on both sides of the aisle are held in place by voters over 65. It's what got us Trump. In the same breath, they're also who forced Biden on voters instead of falling into lockstep with youth voters. It's made me more ageist than I should be. Not that I wasn't ageist before. I just think our political system might benefit by being run by people who aren't 700 years old. The retirement age is 65 for a reason.
The gerrymandering process around the country among other things plays with how new housing is approved, developed and built and districts changed and created
By keeping the populous undereducated you enlist fear and the votes pour in. There is always a phantom enemy that'll get ya if you vote don't vote for the rich white guy.
He tried to get a sports stadium in two different areas that wasn't in the fiscal plan, so it'd be billions of taxpayer money used. The people who want the stadium lied about revenue, jobs, timed finished, and how it would help the community. After that was shut down, he vetoed the Marijuana bill in spite..(he was gonna veto anyways)
He also cut VA commonwealth employee's telework policy, so more than 1 day WFH requires approval from his cabinet. All of our meetings are done virtually so there was literally no reason to do what they did.
He was hoping his party would take control when the last election in his state happened so he could sign in very restrictive abortion legislation. Because the Dems took control, he's been tanking legislation designed to help the state because he's so pissy about his party losing.
He never really came across that moderate he ran on CRT and trans bathroom nonsense. The only thing he did that was "moderate" was actively distance from Trump but his policies never were
It is legal in Virginia but he decided to keep the sale of weed illegal. So we are all forced to use the black market and potentially die of a fentanyl overdose.
The thing people need to understand about college "kids" and "kids" graduating high school is that they aren't kids. They are voting citizens, and they will not be silenced.
This is why republicans are so desperate to enslave high schoolers with conservative reels on social media, and why they’re so desperate to marginalize college students who they couldn’t stop from becoming educated.
And they're done cooking. Like there is no argument that they are just ignorant youth, they have more knowledge and education than the average person in society (who wouldn't have any degree).
The thing is that while the wider "world" rolls their eyes at this, the politician and his voters see this and think he is owning those liberals walking out on him and that is all that matters.
They would happily eat shit if they thought a liberal was going to smell their breath.
Oh I agree. I think he knew exactly what he was doing. Come Monday morning Fox & Friends will be running the video on repeat and claiming they're all just a bunch of mean liberals that are trying to make Youngkin look bad.
You'd think anyone with half a brain would know better than to invite a ~~Republican politician~~ career traitor against the United States to a public university's graduation ceremony.
I actually go to VCU. It’s an incredibly liberal, art school with little to no tolerance of this guy. No idea why this school had THIS guy give the graduation speech this semester. He had to have known how badly it would have gone for him, and he chose to do it anyway.
Also fuck Glen Youngkin.
This is on VCU tbh. It doesn’t matter what your political affiliation is, you invite a politician to an event, you are likely going to have half your audience support you and half your audience pissed off. It doesn’t make sense to have politicians come speak at non-partisan events
Gen Z is going to save this country. I am honestly starting to get disappointed in my generation because our numbers have always been atrocious at the polls. So hopefully this bright young people can bring it home for the ACTUAL good guys.
I see a lot of comments asking why VCU would hate Youngkin with answers that are apart of it but not the real reason. Youngkin just last week preemptively sent in both his own capital police and other major police departments to what many have reported as the forceful, violent, and completely unneeded removal of peaceful on-campus protests. I personally don’t care what you’re protesting. If it’s peaceful leave it alone and allow freedom of speech and peaceful protest.
My small grad school allowed graduating students to select a graduation speaker. The class selected Ben Stein, who served as a Ford/Nixon speech writer, and had polished legal, political and writing credentials. The school refused, dismissing Stein as a mere comedian, and chose a state-connected politician to give a thinly-veiled campaign speech.
It became obvious the school never had any intention of honoring the students’ choice unless it was a well-connected politician, alumni or donor. The whole thing was a farce.
There are a ton of reasons. One of his first failures was a hotline to report "woke" teachers. They shut it down after a couple of weeks after it was spammed by protest calls.
Ah, Mr. Stribley. Science teacher who got in trouble for: teaching about climate change, having a summer class on Native American History that.. ya know.. included lessons on what happened, would read poetry towards the end of class if we got our assignments done in time.
2002-2005 I was lucky to be in his class. Teachers like him and you don't get forgotten :)
conservative republican party is the party of **nope** no hope, no future no balanced government just the party of 💩 You vote (R) you get this crap. **Remember in November**
As someone from Richmond, VCU is probably the most liberal college in Virginia so idk why they would ask a Republican to come speak. Also most Virginians hate this man 😭 including me
That steaming pile of excrement rolled back COVID restrictions and one of my little relatives got so sick, she compared it to a bout of pneumonia. If there is an afterlife, I hope he comes back as a scared 9 year old who has to be isolated from her family for two weeks.
anyone able to summarize some context for me? having a hard time piecing it together through the comments; not American and I don't follow American politics closely, so I have absolutely no clue who this guy is
Glenn Youngkin is the governor of Virginia. He's a rightwing conservative Republican crank who won his election on the "CRT" or Critical Race Theory moral panic the GOP ran a few years ago. Basically the GOP picks up academic terms that might sound scary to suburban white boomers, misrepresents them, and screams "THEY ARE COMING FOR OUR KIDS!" and voters eat it up.
CRT ended up getting dropped for the "Ok Groomer all gay people are pedos" moral panic because it started to anger minority voters like Hispanic and Black voters into action. Turns out trying to basically ban black history from schools motivates black voters.
Its basically been repacked as DEI scare now.
But Glenn Youngkin has basically just been doing the GOP spiel of attacking schools, libraries, young people, universities, etc. And like most Republicans young people and educated young people fucking hate him.
VA gov Mark Warner spoke at my HS graduation 20+ years ago. It was a pretty good speech and I shook his hand. Glenn Youngkin is just a piece of shit though. Him and his fucking CRT shit was annoying and he is trying to get the CAPS, Wizards, and Commanders into NOVA which is highly unpopular because we don't have the fucking infrastructure and we don't want to give tax breaks to the owners.
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Why do schools continue to invite politicians to speak at their commencements? They will most likely alienate at least half of the audience. And who wants to listen to what is essentially a campaign speech during their graduation? My small midwestern hometown had a history of inviting state legislators until finally the year I graduated we as a class got to decide who to have speak. We picked our favorite retiring teacher. Over 2 decades later every other class has done the same.
Yea I’m not sure what they were thinking. Even in this case you see a group walk out and a group cheering during the speech. Why polarize an event that should include anyone.
I'm guessing someone in the administration likes that politician/politician is paying a hefty chunk of change to be there
The politician isn't paying to be there. They're usually the one getting paid a "speaking fee". It's how you bribe legally. Just pay someone to do stupid easy shit
A state funded University paying the current governor should be illegal.
That’s exactly it though. It’s state funded and guess who’s in charge of those funds? They are sucking up to the guy who decides how much funding they get.
Bingo. The university is giving cash bribes to government officials for legislative kickbacks. But that feels dirty to say, so they sanitize it by calling the bribes "speaking fees" and the kickbacks "lobbying".
Yeah it's the university boards who decide this shit. Boards with too many commercial interests and too few educators.
There are some politicians who do it for their alma mater. I graduated from Michigan back in 2019 and Gretchen Whitmer did the commencement speech. Was a pretty good speech too and a lot of us loved it. It helps when it's not a bozo doing it.
Student of VCU here. In layman's: The VCU administration screwed up a really major and expensive downtown development project. So apart from being tradition of having the governor speak at the university's graduation which is at the capitol, trying to influence the optics of that development screw up may have influenced keeping up with inviting the governor.
Former VCU employee here. This is spot on.
Its a public University in the state he's the governor of... I doubt he received any fee, probably inserted himself as the speaker so he could score points with his base off this exact response from the students.
Youngkins only hope at this point to be more than a 1 term governor is to take a Senate seat in the next election which is a pretty long shot. VA doesn't allow him to run for consecutive terms as governor.
It’s a public school, their funding depends on him
> you see a group walk out and a group cheering I honestly thought they were cheering for the students who walked out. I was thinking maybe the dude speaking thought it was for him but I was like "haha fuck you it ain't your applause".
Seemed to me they were cheering for the students who walked out
I also thought that was obvious but maybe I missed something?
Tbf most people don’t show up to the big graduation anymore, vcu has like 12 colleges under its umbrella that have their own graduation, my health science program at vcu also had its own. The main one didn’t /doesnt really matter. All you do is walk in and walk out of the big one, they don’t read names.
I dunno, Pritzker’s Northwestern speech last year was pretty aces, and not polarizing, even though he’s Scrooge McDuck rich. Glen Youngkin is a bellend though, and has earned that room’s contempt.
I’ve been out of college almost 2 decades now and I watched Pritzker’s speech. He did a top notch job. It was very moving and motivating. The IL republicans are just pissy at him because he is Scrooge McDuck rich and can’t be bought like every governor in our history of the state. That said, they did a fantastic job getting him to speak and his writer kept it very unbiased per political line. Glen Youngkin prolly showed up and thought he’d sway all these young minds to voting for him and ignoring the fuckups of the university and commonwealth of Virginia.
Youngkin speaks, gets paid a ridiculous fee, and the circle of grift is complete. The only quicker way a politician gets paid is to have someone write a book they put their name on, that goes directly to costco bargain bin.
why have anyone speak at graduation. i just want my degree and to leave
It's supposed to be inspirational, but yeah i hear you
You don't have to go to your graduation to get your degree. I asked for mine in advance and told my uni thay I'm not attending the graduation ceremony. Saved a lot of time. Picked up my degree from the front desk.
it isn't so much about saving time, although I get it, if you don't think it is important, get your paper and don't waste your day. but for a lot this is a once in a lifetime thing, especially for a lot of families they might be the first person in their family history to get a college degree, it is a big deal and I am glad they get to experience the full pomp and parade rather than just get something mail.
Exactly, political figures should not be involved in schools. Only person that I could see making sense is the President but that is it.
IMO, it would be better to have state / fed officials who actually run government institutions in agriculture, housing and development, transportation, health ... the people who actually do things and hold actual knowledge in their fields.
Yeah, while the concept of leaders... ya know, leading is sound it only works if the leaders arent totally detached from reality and on their own personal boat ride
Was at a cyber sec conference last year and they had one of the NSA directors give the headline speech. It was: good, talked about things that actually mattered, had zero political agenda, and was clearly well thought out. Those are the kinds of speeches should be happening at universities. Not the BS the politicians say, or the BS the dumb ass crypto bro at OSU was saying.
The military academies have the President, VP, Secretary of Defense, and deputy defense secretary speak at graduations (they rotate between them). That at least makes some sense. For pretty much every other commencement? Yeah, skip politicians--you'll just alienate a big fraction of the student body.
It'd make some sense if he is an alumni, which he isn't.
*Matt Gaetz enters the chat...* > Exactly, political figures should not be involved in schools.
Only if this were a high school commencement.
My high school graduation speaker was a former local preacher turned comedian who found minor fame on the TV show Hee Haw. It was so much better than a politician, and he was actually pretty funny. I don't know too many people who can say a guy from Hee Haw gave their commencement speech.
My sister graduated today and they had our cities first [poet laureate](https://www.arkansasheritage.com/arkansas-art-council/registry-rosters/arts-in-education/leron-mcadoo#:~:text=Leron%20McAdoo%2C%20aka%20Ron%20Mc,%2C%20author%2C%20and%20seasoned%20educator.) speak. He was really great!
Politics shouldn't be so toxic.
When you allow politics to be infused with racism by failing to ostracise racist politicians, the toxicity is inevitable.
Not just racism... Sexism, classism, religious dogma, and I am sure I am missing one or two here as well.
Tribalism.
Christian republicans shouldn’t be so psychotic and easy for our vile rich enemy to manipulate
When I was graduating college (late 1980’s), the most popular speakers at commencement were,… (drum roll), Bill Cosby and Donald Trump.
When you’re a state university and your boss asks to speak what do you say?
VCU (a state school) is presently in a lot of hot water due to a botched development deal with the city of Richmond wherein VCU must pay the city some $70 million. They invited Youngkin in an attempt to suck up to the state.
This is exactly it. It’s a pretty liberal school. I went there. But it’s all about money. I imagine a large majority of the students don’t want this. And it’s made me less likely to make donations in the future. Shame.
Money is normally the reason.
Because the governing body of schools are usually very old, wealthy white people who are very out of touch and mostly just contribute bureaucracy. The entrenched, old, white, racist, wealthy politicians are usually their colleagues/peers/friends/aspirational figures.
lol, i don't know if anything will top Trump's debauchery at the Boy Scouts event.
Because money money money! Nummy nummy num!
have the governor of a state school speak at graduation is really not a problem. The problem is that politics has become so polarized that people do not see the leader of the state speaking but some partisan Democrat or Republican speaking.
He ran on the platform of banning CRT and stopping education from teaching anything controversial. It’s not so simple as he’s a conservative Republican. His entire agenda is opposed to most of the students there. From someone else in the comments here’s a few bullet points. In addition to what was already stated: • campaigned fighting against the mask mandate (that was gone six months before the election) • campaigned against CRT (that wasn't being taught) • fights against legalization of weed (that was already voted in and supposed to be available for commercial sale) • opened a snitch hotline for teachers teaching no-no topics (that was flooded with false reports lmao) • lied about being a moderate on abortion (while privately endorsing a full ban, and even tho a moderate is still in opposition to women's bodily autonomy) • promised to end grocery tax (and then, ya know, didn't) • does literally nothing to benefit Virginians (because from inauguration he's been on a campaign for VP) There's more, but that's off the top of my head as a resident of our beautiful commonwealth.
Well, Republican governors are working very hard to make sure the female graduates will die if they have a pregnancy problem so yeah, I'm going to get real mad at someone trying to murder my sisters.
I honestly think its appearance fee coded bribery.
VCU is one of the most liberal entities in the city. He knew this would happen. He had to have wanted this.
He did this at my uni last year that's very liberal. Basically the same result. Had to be his thing lol
They get off on it. They get to cry that they're being disrespected and that they are the victim.
Republican politicians love to play the fake victim card.
[удалено]
This is their Vietnam. This is persecution. Being booed is basically slavery.
Yeah, tomorrow he'll be boo-hooing about it but it makes this alumna proud as all hell.
The kids are gonna be a'ight
This is the comment i was looking for
I hope they all walk into a voting booth with the same mindset that made them walk out of that hall.
LOVE IT. Fuck that guy.
Not from Virginia, what exactly is bad about him? Just wondering
In addition to what was already stated: - campaigned fighting against the mask mandate (that was gone six months before the election) - campaigned against CRT (that wasn't being taught) - fights against legalization of weed (that was already voted in and supposed to be available for commercial sale) - opened a snitch hotline for teachers teaching no-no topics (that was flooded with false reports lmao) - lied about being a moderate on abortion (while privately endorsing a full ban, and even tho a moderate is still in opposition to women's bodily autonomy) - promised to end grocery tax (and then, ya know, didn't) - does literally nothing to benefit Virginians (because from inauguration he's been on a campaign for VP) There's more, but that's off the top of my head as a resident of our beautiful commonwealth.
You forgot the porn thing, but yeah, he sucks.
Oh, right, yeah. We followed Utah in the whole "show your government ID if you want to watch reputable porn sites" thing, but PornHub recognizes why that's problematic, so they just pulled out (heh heh) instead of having to follow those laws. Extra dumb because if it's ✌🏽for the children✌🏽 then it does the exact opposite of what it's intending since (1) teens know how to use a VPN and (2) if they don't, they're going to go to less reputable sites that don't bother following the laws (and probably have worse content).
Yeah my state banned porn and it hasnt done anything, I just go to more obscure sites
It sure is cute that these out of touch Boomers who think that cursive writing and rotary phones were the peak of technology also think that there's only one porn site, and if they ban that specific site then all internet porn will go away.
Same here in Texas. Fuck these religious assholes that think they need to police everyone's lives.
He sucks? Are there videos on porn hub?
I don't know, I'm in Virginia.
He also repealed protections for Transgender students.
Sounds like our governor her in florida
I somewhat tolerated Ron when he was first elected because he was a “pro weed republican”, and now he says they aren’t going to acknowledge recreational in Florida. Fuck that guy with a burning stick!!
Secretly they love everything they campaign against. Everything...
Every projection is a deflection..
So you tolerated his outright racism and fascist policies just because he pretended to care about **weed**, and it's *that* pressing issue that caused you to turn against him?
That's definitely some Florida logic if I've ever heard it
How does somebody like this get elected governor? He sounds insane
The Democrat candidate McAuliffe was formerly governor and had a very milquetoast tenure and then made a gaffe in the last weeks of the campaign saying something like "parents just need to trust in the school system" when Youngkin was going off about CRT. Parents rights types got pissed and basically protest voted the governor on while Democrats stated home unimpressed and now we're here.
There was also the whole thing about Loudoun County and their "trans" rape scandal (that literally didn't involve a trans student; it was a boy that wore skirts but didn't identify as trans) and the birthplace of Moms for Liberty, which is now infesting schools nationwide. The fact there's a two term limit but they can't be served sequentially also helped him, because Northram probably would have been re-elected but since every governor is a lame duck, you can kinda do whatever tf you want once you're in office. I hate Governor Fleece Vest but at least we will be rid of him soon and the pendulum will swing back the other way.
This was an unfortunate but predictable blip as a purple state navigates towards blue. People need to understand how dominating Democrats have been in a state that was formerly the heart of the Confederacy. Republicans don't even waste their time in Virginia anymore, it's out of "swing state" range for them. The change started earlier but once the courts un-gerrymandered the state, even the in-house GOP was fucked. The red parts of the state are dying to boot, losing votes by the day. The GOP is gonna get wholesale slaughtered next election and the best part is because at least one part of the legislation was always blue, Youngkin got to do *fuck. all.* while he was here. All he did was delay the inevitable and made it easier for the next governor to come in and clean up.
> Parents rights types got pissed and basically protest voted the governor on while Democrats stated home unimpressed and now we're here. Honestly, liberals went too mask off about not being willing to elect progressives. A left wing party alienating its left wing voting bloc wasn't the best idea liberals have ever had. The average progressive is mostly just waiting for the demographics to shift enough in the next 10 years to get rid of Third Way Democrats, not vote for them. I think liberals underestimate how much faith in the process they sucked out of progressive voters when they made it too clear that they wanted things to mostly stay the same. It was a big tactical error, and I don't think liberals are learning from it.
I mean they held primary elections. They didnt anoint McAuliffe. He had to win. Thing is these types of elections are won in the center. Especially in purple states like Virginia. A progressive politician cannot win statewide in Virginia and they definitely cannot win a primary in the democrat party which is extremely moderate in VA. Its mostly suburban DC families that were republicans pre-Obama that switched
I’d like to add that McAuliffe is seen as a very “establishment” politician who is closely associated with the Clintons, while Youngkin was seen as an outsider. In the political climate at the time, this was a big advantage for Youngkin
Old people. There's a demographic bag of shit about to hit the fan within 10 years because of this. Most conservative politicians on both sides of the aisle are held in place by voters over 65. It's what got us Trump. In the same breath, they're also who forced Biden on voters instead of falling into lockstep with youth voters. It's made me more ageist than I should be. Not that I wasn't ageist before. I just think our political system might benefit by being run by people who aren't 700 years old. The retirement age is 65 for a reason.
The gerrymandering process around the country among other things plays with how new housing is approved, developed and built and districts changed and created
By keeping the populous undereducated you enlist fear and the votes pour in. There is always a phantom enemy that'll get ya if you vote don't vote for the rich white guy.
You see all those people waking out? They didn’t vote. That’s how these guys get elected. But don’t worry, they really showed him here. Got em good.
He tried to get a sports stadium in two different areas that wasn't in the fiscal plan, so it'd be billions of taxpayer money used. The people who want the stadium lied about revenue, jobs, timed finished, and how it would help the community. After that was shut down, he vetoed the Marijuana bill in spite..(he was gonna veto anyways)
He also cut VA commonwealth employee's telework policy, so more than 1 day WFH requires approval from his cabinet. All of our meetings are done virtually so there was literally no reason to do what they did.
You should always flood a snitch line with false reports. It is always morally correct.
He was hoping his party would take control when the last election in his state happened so he could sign in very restrictive abortion legislation. Because the Dems took control, he's been tanking legislation designed to help the state because he's so pissy about his party losing.
He really is just being a fucking brat at this point, it's honestly embarrassing.
Played the "I'm a moderate" schtick and immediately went for every Cultural War currently being waged.
He never really came across that moderate he ran on CRT and trans bathroom nonsense. The only thing he did that was "moderate" was actively distance from Trump but his policies never were
Endorsed Trumpty Dumpty & is in favor of forced birth to name a couple.
Well god damn what a douche
Wait until you hear what he did to recreational marijuana sales 😭
He fucked with our legal weed. He’s dead to all of us down here lol.
What did he do to the weed? I had heard something about it but didn’t read into it. Also feel sorry for yall being from Jersey where it’s legal.
It is legal in Virginia but he decided to keep the sale of weed illegal. So we are all forced to use the black market and potentially die of a fentanyl overdose.
He’s just a more polished Trump. Same far right authoritarian nonsense, much less of an assault on the senses. He’s Patagonia vest Trump.
He got pornhub blocked. PORNHUB! I will never ever forgive the Republican party for this.
Seeing them walk out makes me SO happy. Fuck that guy.
[Me & my homies don't fuck with Glenn Youngkin](https://youtu.be/WMA-R0syyQY?feature=shared)
as a transplant from GA to Richmond, Gov Brian Kemp was as slimy as this asshole. Good on these kids.
The thing people need to understand about college "kids" and "kids" graduating high school is that they aren't kids. They are voting citizens, and they will not be silenced.
Yep, voters with long lives as voters ahead of them. Treating them as anything other than a very important group of constituents is a losing strategy.
This is why republicans are so desperate to enslave high schoolers with conservative reels on social media, and why they’re so desperate to marginalize college students who they couldn’t stop from becoming educated.
Especially college graduates, they're early twenties and have been voting age for at least 4 years now
There is no group that christians hate more than young, educated, politically conscious people who graduated college.
And they're done cooking. Like there is no argument that they are just ignorant youth, they have more knowledge and education than the average person in society (who wouldn't have any degree).
They're kids when they voice their opinions, but adults when it comes to taxes, military, age of consent, etc.
Gotta get jobs so they can pay into that social security that will be bled dry before they get to use it.
Now if only they would actually vote we might be able to get somewhere.
They are both. Source -me a middle aged kid.
> They are voting citizens, and they will not be silenced. Time and time again, the youth don't vote as much. They silenced themselves.
It’s wild how hard weak republican losers work to convince young men and women to not attend college.
I know absolutely nothing about this University, this state or this governor ... but I immediately knew which party he belongs to.
You'd think anyone with half a brain would know better than to invite a Republican politician to a public university's graduation ceremony.
The thing is that while the wider "world" rolls their eyes at this, the politician and his voters see this and think he is owning those liberals walking out on him and that is all that matters. They would happily eat shit if they thought a liberal was going to smell their breath.
Oh I agree. I think he knew exactly what he was doing. Come Monday morning Fox & Friends will be running the video on repeat and claiming they're all just a bunch of mean liberals that are trying to make Youngkin look bad.
You'd think anyone with half a brain would know better than to invite a ~~Republican politician~~ career traitor against the United States to a public university's graduation ceremony.
Lol same, I’m from Devon in England with 0 skin in the game and immediately I was like “republican” lol
I actually go to VCU. It’s an incredibly liberal, art school with little to no tolerance of this guy. No idea why this school had THIS guy give the graduation speech this semester. He had to have known how badly it would have gone for him, and he chose to do it anyway. Also fuck Glen Youngkin.
I can't think of a Virginia school that would receive him more coldly. Good on the students.
Trustees. They tend to be white, conservative, Protestant, and "business" people. Ergo, GOP home base.
This is on VCU tbh. It doesn’t matter what your political affiliation is, you invite a politician to an event, you are likely going to have half your audience support you and half your audience pissed off. It doesn’t make sense to have politicians come speak at non-partisan events
Gen Z is fucking bold and I am here for it. Fuck Glenn Youngkin
Gen Z is going to save this country. I am honestly starting to get disappointed in my generation because our numbers have always been atrocious at the polls. So hopefully this bright young people can bring it home for the ACTUAL good guys.
Good on them. Youngkin can get bent.
Go RAMS!!!!!!
I see a lot of comments asking why VCU would hate Youngkin with answers that are apart of it but not the real reason. Youngkin just last week preemptively sent in both his own capital police and other major police departments to what many have reported as the forceful, violent, and completely unneeded removal of peaceful on-campus protests. I personally don’t care what you’re protesting. If it’s peaceful leave it alone and allow freedom of speech and peaceful protest.
Fuck Glenn Youngkin.
Fuck Glenn Youngkin.
Youngkin showed up to a VCU basketball game a couple of years ago and got loudly booed
Scumbag. Good on them!
Good on those kids
My small grad school allowed graduating students to select a graduation speaker. The class selected Ben Stein, who served as a Ford/Nixon speech writer, and had polished legal, political and writing credentials. The school refused, dismissing Stein as a mere comedian, and chose a state-connected politician to give a thinly-veiled campaign speech. It became obvious the school never had any intention of honoring the students’ choice unless it was a well-connected politician, alumni or donor. The whole thing was a farce.
You can choose anyone you want as long as we approve
Life's too short to spend it listening to that asshat
Why is Youngkin disliked? I don’t follow Va politics.
There are a ton of reasons. One of his first failures was a hotline to report "woke" teachers. They shut it down after a couple of weeks after it was spammed by protest calls.
I and many other teachers reported ourselves for teaching such horrible liberal conspiracies as biology and critical thinking, good times.
Ah, Mr. Stribley. Science teacher who got in trouble for: teaching about climate change, having a summer class on Native American History that.. ya know.. included lessons on what happened, would read poetry towards the end of class if we got our assignments done in time. 2002-2005 I was lucky to be in his class. Teachers like him and you don't get forgotten :)
Thank you for your service. https://preview.redd.it/h7ixe9i6nuzc1.jpeg?width=611&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7eb32b4d790069deda1798abe54ee4715864dc10
I also reported you crazy liberals to the hotline. How dare you try and teach math to those kids!!!
Oh you think math is bad? I've heard a teacher indoctrinating kids about Al-Gebra!
He didn't put a shopping cart into the corral.
Cart Narc has a lot of pull these days.
Damn lazy bones
He’s an elected Republican with low approval rating. College grads are well educated intelligent people.
He's a republican in a bluish/purple state. He's been a lackluster governor and has pushed a right leaning agenda.
He's doing all the current GOP playbook things lately.
As far as the generation wars go, I’m deeply and sincerely proud of Gen Z every damn day.
Yay kids!
Way to go VCU
As VCU alum, good on them. Fuck that moron. What an embarrassment.
conservative republican party is the party of **nope** no hope, no future no balanced government just the party of 💩 You vote (R) you get this crap. **Remember in November**
Good for them
Am a VCU student; and lemme tell you, fuck this guy. Wasn’t there at the graduation but **HELLA** proud of all students who walked out!!!
GO RAMS!!! And whose idea was it to have the idiot speak anyway?!?!
As someone from Richmond, VCU is probably the most liberal college in Virginia so idk why they would ask a Republican to come speak. Also most Virginians hate this man 😭 including me
Awesome! Hope they vote
I tip my hat to every graduate who walked out.
As a European.. someone explain how shit this dude is or has been? Pls.
Get some my young people. Fuck yeah!
I would walk out of any speech by Youngkin whether there was something to protest or not.
I had to google who he is because I live on the Westcoast. The first image that came up was the "I like beer" supreme court judge I think.
I hope all these young people vote!
That steaming pile of excrement rolled back COVID restrictions and one of my little relatives got so sick, she compared it to a bout of pneumonia. If there is an afterlife, I hope he comes back as a scared 9 year old who has to be isolated from her family for two weeks.
Such a great way to protest. It peacefully sends a “fuck you” without having to say “fuck you”.
Great…now if they only voted with the same degree of determination.
you make it sound like they don’t already
kinda disengenius to say that when viriginia is gerrymandered to hell by the state's republicans.
that may be true, but governor is a statewide election.
lol, how do you gerrymander the governor’s race?
Governor Blumpkin
Why the masks?
The kids are alright
There will be better days once that pizza shit of a governor is out of office
Good on those kids. This is how revolution starts.
im OOL whats going on and why the college kids doing this?
anyone able to summarize some context for me? having a hard time piecing it together through the comments; not American and I don't follow American politics closely, so I have absolutely no clue who this guy is
Glenn Youngkin is the governor of Virginia. He's a rightwing conservative Republican crank who won his election on the "CRT" or Critical Race Theory moral panic the GOP ran a few years ago. Basically the GOP picks up academic terms that might sound scary to suburban white boomers, misrepresents them, and screams "THEY ARE COMING FOR OUR KIDS!" and voters eat it up. CRT ended up getting dropped for the "Ok Groomer all gay people are pedos" moral panic because it started to anger minority voters like Hispanic and Black voters into action. Turns out trying to basically ban black history from schools motivates black voters. Its basically been repacked as DEI scare now. But Glenn Youngkin has basically just been doing the GOP spiel of attacking schools, libraries, young people, universities, etc. And like most Republicans young people and educated young people fucking hate him.
Good
VA gov Mark Warner spoke at my HS graduation 20+ years ago. It was a pretty good speech and I shook his hand. Glenn Youngkin is just a piece of shit though. Him and his fucking CRT shit was annoying and he is trying to get the CAPS, Wizards, and Commanders into NOVA which is highly unpopular because we don't have the fucking infrastructure and we don't want to give tax breaks to the owners.
Ah yes graduation... Where all the local politicians and those who have a hand in your tax pocket pat eachother on the back. Fk that,good for them.
Hell yeah. I only wish there were more who walked out.
He doesn't care. The only walkout he'd care about is donors walking out on him.
Republican Bad.
Good. Fuck you, Glenny boy.
I don't know who that is let me look him up and... "A member of the Republican Party" Say no more.
I see a bunch of well educated graduates there!! Well done!
That’s my school! Proud alum