For 5,000 seniors, their families and friends, broadcaster and Cornell alumnus Keith Olbermann '79 spared the bologna. Instead, he served his May 23 Senior Convocation address with wry.
"Nineteen years ago yesterday, I spent the longest five minutes of my life when I placed a call to the Cornell registrar's office to get the official word about whether or not I had graduated," Olbermann told the Barton Hall crowd, in his clear bass voice. "This was dad's fault. Dad had called a few hours before and explained that he would not be driving up here from New York to watch me watch other people graduate. He wanted to know, and he wanted to know then."
Well, 19 years after that fateful phone call, Olbermann holds court nightly on MSNBC's "The Big Show with Keith Olbermann," the upstart network's top-rated program. He is a former co-anchor of ESPN's "SportsCenter" and has been sports anchor and reporter at KTLA-TV in Los Angeles, WCVB-TV in Boston and for Cable News Network in New York.
But there was a reason that phone call to the registrar's office was the longest five minutes of Olbermann's life. The problem arose because in the frenetic spring semester of his senior year, he needed to complete 27 credit hours in order to graduate. He got 28.
"[It was] alleged at the time to be an all-time tie for the university record," said Olbermann, who recalled the courses: history, freshman chemistry, biology, introductory physics, two courses in English, an advanced communications course, three credits as a teaching assistant, one hour credit for an internship and one credit for an independent project. All this on top of 40 hours a week working at WVBR in Ithaca. How did he do it? He might have missed a few lectures, he admitted.
Olbermann described how the person he spoke to in the registrar's office prolonged his agony by checking a few things before giving him his answer.
"Did you know you can sweat from your eyelids?" Olbermann said, "My entire life flashed before me. That American history class, which I had dutifully attended maybe six or seven times was going to do me in. My job search was for nothing. My career was on hold. I would have to clean beer steins at Rulloff's all summer and pay my own way."
The office finally affirmed that Olbermann had graduated, he said. "I did not stop panting until I handed my father my diploma and said, 'Here's your receipt,' and told him to beat it out of town as fast as the car would go, before they changed their minds."
But, the point of Olbermann's lecture wasn't good fortune but "moral force," he said. He told a story of how he had struggled in the freshman chemistry course he needed to complete that senior year, when a kindly teaching assistant offered him an "A" in the class's lab, only if Olbermann continued to be diligent in his work.
"Here he was not necessarily cutting corners, not necessarily undermining the standards of the university, not really risking anything of his own," Olbermann said. "But nonetheless, he was factoring in the human equation, some sense of proportion into the rigid formulas of our lives."
Olbermann then spoke about the importance of moral force in his life now and in the news business. Recently, he said, he has become sick of the continuous play given the Monica Lewinsky-Clinton investigation story, especially on his own program. Between January and early May, his program has been devoted almost exclusively to the topic, he said.
"At first I genuinely believed this was a relevant matter for discussion. I used moral force to keep sex out of it whenever possible," he told the audience. "I didn't allow the word 'scandal' or 'affair' to be used. I tried to be non-partisan and skeptical about both the accused and the accusers. But as the weeks have gone by, it has become more and more clear to me there is no moral force at work in this process, whatsoever. Nobody is doing the right thing."
Olbermann said he has told MSNBC that the show needs to change its obsessive coverage of the Lewinsky-Clinton investigation. "I simply could not continue doing this show about the endless investigation and the investigation of the investigation and the investigation of the investigation of the investigation," he said.
"I had to choose what I felt in my heart was right over what I felt my in my wallet was smart," he said. "I await their answer. In the interim, I am not buying any more furniture."
Then Olbermann concluded his message to the soon-to-be graduates: "Life is defined by how much you improve the lives of others. Good luck. May you do better than all of us have. You take it from here."
After the address, the all-male, a cappella group The Hangovers took the stage and performed an impressively melodic cover of Eric Clapton's "Change The World" and a high-spirited version of Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode."
Before Olbermann's address, Class of '98 members Rita Doyle and Nathan Green presented Cornell, in the person of Vice President Susan Murphy, with a class-gift check for $94,590.29, the seed money for a scholarship fund.
In her concluding message, Murphy said, "May you begin this next chapter in your life confident in your abilities, committed to make a difference, compassionate in your actions and comforted by the love and support of your families and of your Cornell friends."
Senior Class President Melissa Amernick's address described many of the moments she and her classmates have cherished over the past four years.
"Throughout the speech, I was thinking speak slowly and clearly," Amernick said afterwards. "Even now, it's hard to believe we're graduating. I don't know when it will really hit."
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