• I attend the UMKC Bloch School of Business and am graduating this May of 2019. To my current knowledge, ONLY upper level graduate students are set to be commencement speakers at our ceremony. I'm not sure how you feel about that, but I feel as if selecting speakers from our graduating class would be a better way to end our college days.

Who better to truly capture our years of experience than us graduating students? Only one of us can convey the friends, laughs, learning, good times, and bad times too. Graduation is a time of celebration and reflection, and the only way to achieve that status in a speech is by letting students from our class take the stage for a few minutes and speak.

I propose that we select one boy and one girl from the 2019 graduating class to speak in one of two ways.

1) Organize a formal vote to determine which students are selected to deliver the speeches.

2) Have a speech writing contest and have our graduation committee select two students who best captured the essence of attending the UMKC Bloch School of Management

Either option I feel is appropriate as we can either have a class favorite deliver our final remarks or someone who has something meaningful to be said.

A graduation speaker may not feel like a huge deal to you the student, but why not make a strong memory of our graduation if we have the chance? So join me and sign this petition to show our administration that a graduation speaker is something we truly care about. Let's make a final memory.

-The Graduate