For the Times, Time Stood Still

Some things never change. The Provost's vacuous fall convocation speech is one of them. Campus construction is another.

Our stunning new quad

In our world of chaos and confusion, it is always good to find a place of stability, something constant and reliable, something that does not change, no matter what.

We are happy to announce that UMass Boston, as a true health promoting university, has provided us with such stability in the form of the 2023 Fall Convocation ceremony.

As we Listened to the Provost’s convocation speech we were engulfed by a strong sense of déjà vu. So strong, that we started to think we were losing our minds. Are we getting senile? Were we transported back in time through a mysterious vortex? Is the world going crazy? We had to dig into the UMass Boston YouTube channel to solve the mystery.

Well, there’s good news and funny news. The good news - the world is still in order, no vortex and no early signs of dementia (at least not on our part). The funny news: our Provost copy-pasted his 2022 speech almost word-for-word, and even forgot to change the year. Only one thing changed: in 2022 he wore a suit and in 2023, an academic gown.

You can torture yourself by clicking on the links to the two ceremonies, but in order to save you the need to go through the same confusion, we highlighted the nearly identical parts in every speech.

2022:

“It is my pleasure to welcome you to the 2022-2023 academic year convocation ceremony of the university of Massachusetts Boston. I’m delighted to be here with all of you this morning.

The start of a new academic year is always exhilarating and it is especially meaningful as we re-engage, following a difficult 2.5 years of COVID 19 uncertainty. Yet, we have much to be proud of as we navigate these complicated times. Our campus community continues to demonstrate remarkable care, compassion and resilience, and I have been heartened by the energy on campus, particularly from our students, many of whom shared their appreciation for being able to reconnect with each other and our stellar faculty and staff as we come back once again to our beautiful campus.

At the same time we remain cognizant of our individual and collective responsibility to prioritize the physical, mental and social health of our community, and indeed I am grateful for the steady leadership UMass Boston has shown in this regard.

This is a pivotal moment for UMass Boston as we look to the future with renewed dedication to equity, a commitment to anti-racism and health promotion, permanent leadership, a new quad that will enhance our beautiful campus, and our new strategic plan, for the times.

2023:

“Welcome to the 2022-2023 (sic) academic year convocation ceremony of the university of Massachusetts Boston. It brings me tremendous joy to be here with you and to see all of you here together this morning.

The start of a new academic year is always exhilarating. Our campus community continues to demonstrate care, compassion, resilience, and constructive progress, and I have been heartened by the energy on campus, particularly from our students, many of whom shared their appreciation for having the opportunity to fully engage with each other and our stellar faculty and staff.

At the same time we are also cognizant of our individual and collective responsibility to the social health of our community, and I am grateful for the leadership that is occurring at all levels throughout the entire university as UMass Boston remains at the forefront of a safe and healthy higher education institution.

This is clearly a pivotal moment in our history. As a global society but it’s also a truly significant chapter for us here at UMass Boston. Moving into the future with renewed dedication to equity, a commitment to anti-racism and health promotion, the development of a stunning new campus quad that will enhance our already beautiful campus and our mission driven 10 year strategic plan, that was launched at this time last year”.

In both speeches he later goes on and on about our new strategic plan and new grand scholarly challenges that we should all engage in full time from now on. We stopped listening at that point, it was too painful. But trust us, it was also quite identical.

Some questions:

• If the Provost uses almost the exact same speech he used last year, does it constitute plagiarism? Self-plagiarism?

• Is it a metaphor to the state of the university and the higher education system at large, or does it prove our previously proposed theory that the Provost is nothing but a primitive version of ChatGPT with a very limited vocabulary that can only generate limited variations of one speech, and that is not even sophisticated enough to realize we’re already in academic year 2023-2024?

• In other words - how can we trust his promises to transform our campus if he can’t even update his own convocation speech for the times?

Other speech-specific questions:

• How long does a pivotal moment last?

• Is saying at the start of every year that we have renewed dedication to equity, anti-racism and health promotion some kind of hypnotherapy that is meant to convince us that we do have this dedication?

• Is our quad really stunning, even though it’s been a huge construction site for the past two+ years with no end in site sight (another thing that never changes!), or are we judging it by our Eurocentric beauty standards?

• The Provost’s first convocation speech was in Fall 2021, but he only copy-pasted the last 60 seconds of it into his 2022 and 2023 speeches. Why? Is it because he knew he couldn’t possibly top the absolutely spectacular first part of that speech, an excerpt of which we embed here because no words can do it justice (audio only)¹?

I guess we’ll have to wait till 2024 to find out.

1. Thumbnail image courtesy of Justine Lecrivain