Superbly articulated !!! I agree.

Lighten up damoki! After 4 years and a 3.98 grade average she should have the ok to say whatever she wanted to say. Give her a break-she deserves it. Gary

I think the speech was juvenile and should have been changed for that reason not the reason that some people would be offended. At my daughters's college graduation the speech was juvenile and very embarassing for the school. A speech needs to be looked at and commented on before giving it both for the schools sake and for the sake of the person giving the speech. It is surprising that this student is going to Harvard?

Damoki, I assume you wanted her speech to be how you currently write. Boring, tight fisted and tight a$$ed.

In this day and age we need to lighten up. She gave truth and honesty with humor. No 18 year old anywhere wants to be preached to especially not by their peer. I mean were you a teenager 50 years ago or what? I cannot tell you what my Valedictorian's speech was about but I sure can remember the Saluditorian's speech.

For all you 18 year olds reading. I know being the Valedictorian is very important but sometimes in life you have to stand up to what you believe in. How can a plagorist trample on freedom of speech. Oh right she herself cannot write. I would have told them "get the saluditorian to do the commencement speech." But hey I was an Advance Placement rebel in high school. As long as you are not being disrespectful then stand up and be heard.

Traditional Values my right butt cheek. They are still having segregated proms in the same school they make news about the situation year after year. Is this tradition? Is this acceptable? Please Damoki get the sleep out your eyes and quit trying to write over peoples heads.

I kept trying to read your speech, but it was so boring I kept falling asleep. Are you that boring in pereson?

Many controversies result from a flawed premise. We have one here. The Valedictorian does not deliver the commencement address. The Valedictorian delivers the valedictory which is a goodbye message. The inspirational "conquer the world" commencement address is usually delivered by a person who has been successful at some level so that the graduating class can emulate the speaker.

The valedictorian is usually the person who has achieved the highest academic grades and is considered to be the smartest kid in the class. Jem Lugo is that and her original speech is a great example of her intelligence and her achievement. It's hard to tell whether Springstead High helped Ms Lugo to be the brilliant communicator that she is or if she is that despite Springstead. Given the censorship, I would guess the latter.

Her original "goodbye" (valedictory) speech said the following:

We survived. We made it.
Get money through a socially acceptable way.
Stay out of jail.
Stay sane.
Stand for something and be heard.
Maintain your relationships with your family and friends.
This place won't be the same without us.
We're out of here.

This is a perfect valedictory delivered to its audience in a perfect way and in a contemporary vernacular.

Harvard, and the world, are lucky to get this young lady. She has already begun to leave her legacy.

I liked it! I think the part about a reliable income is right on! Too real? Life is too real and an income you can rely on is at the top of most people's agenda. How do you get it? You go to school, work hard and get a good job. Amen!!!

First of all, we ask these students to think for themselves. We ask them to be themselves. Why in the heck would we ask them to become someone they are not or say something they don't believe at graduation?

At my daughter's graduation, the valedictorian gave a very funny speech where he poked fun at the trends and fashions of the graduates' lives. He also poked fun at some of our county and school's programs and policies. It really ticked off the superintendent. It was hysterical and all true. Hat's off to our principal who let this young man present his speech, not one that was so safe that it lost character.

The teachers ( including me) appreciated what this young man said. We were proud that we had educated an independent thinker who was able to say what he thought in a clever way.

I'll try to make it plain & also simple to you: Never let schooling get in the way of your education. Mark Twain

Damoki and School Administrators....

The young womens speech whether childish or not was too be her own. Whether she chooses to make it inspiring, funny or serious should have been her choice. If not, the school should have given guidelines prior to her writing the paper. Very defined guidelines, not ones with possibility of wide intrepretation.

I have attended a number of high school and several college commencements and they had similar speeches to that of the young ladies. They are not alway inspiring, yet if you really listen to the original speech she is being inspiring in a humorous way. Perhaps she knows her fellow classmates better than Damoki or the Administrators. Perhaps not.

Maybe you should all think about why a 3.98 GPA student would write that paper. Was any of it not true? Was any of it vulger? Was any of it foul? Was any of it subversive? If not then why censor it. No matter how you look at this the school administration censored the paper. The question becomes: Is this a country where we want to support that kind of censorship?

As a concerned parent in today's world I would have preferred the young ladies original speech.

As a high school teacher myself, I do not understand why all the drama. We know our students write to get a reaction and our jobs as educators and adults is to guide them towards the grownup way to get the reaction they want. I agree that we teach our students until they walk across the stage, never to be our students again, but we should not stop teaching just because the grades are in and the ranks have been decided. As adults, the sponsor, the principal, and the student's favorite english teacher should have come together and helped her rewrite her speech. They could have shown her how to incoporate the expectations of all parties in order to get the reaction they all wanted.

DaMoki, Your articulation was indeed superb. You wrote a wonderful essay on the subject without offending anyone. You did not express, however, any opinion as to whether the first or second speech was preferred.

It is my , very humble opinion , that the young lady should not have spoken at all. She had ..." Won " ... the right , through her own hard efforts, to make the address. It should have been " Her " moment in the spotlight...unfettered by the editorial bias of the school administration ( with the exception that the speech should not be obscene )

Her speech, while at times a bit sophomoric in its application of humor, was hers and not the schools. If the administration want serious and moving speeches...meant as motivational devices...then hire motivational speakers. The school was in the wrong to force her to rewrite her speech and too harsh in its description of it...Appalling ? ...I think not...light-hearted ? sure and harmless...but the moment was hers and they stole it...that was wrong.

my daughter had the same thing happen ..she wanted to quote green day lyrics from the song "minority" i wanta be the minority .. down with the moral majority ... and they told her "no".. so she rewrote .,.but on graduation night .. gave her original one.. and i backed her totally.. what were they gona do .. withhold her diploma !!!

Damoki, excellent post and phrased in an INTELLIGENT manner in which Ms. Lugo's speech should also have been presented. Anyone can get up in front of a crowd and babble to them all in "like, ya know" 's and "I was like" 's and "whataver" 's. In this world of easily accessible news throughout the international community, I see no reason to further forward the appearance that all Americans are idots. A Valedictorian performing a speech like a typical teenage punk talking to his friends sitting on their import listening to hip hop? WTG USA.

And for those posters who say "lighten up" and "she did nothing wrong", I strongly beg to differ. She was given an opportunity few in this world receive, and all she had to do was handle it with dignity, respect and a sense of maturity that her academic achievements suggest. In this she failed; she took the easy route by trying to appeal to the lowest common human denominator. The school administration expected more, and she should have expected more of herself.

The original was excellent not childlike. It was practical sound advice. It had no offensive tone. It was not an idealistic glorification of High School which is the norm for most valedictorians who are still in the syncophantic mode. Lugo obviously has grown beyond that but some more sour grapes commentators may have gotten stuck in the cheer leader RAH RAH mode.

I haven't bothered to read either speech in detail, nor have I read the nine pages of commentary, but I have to reply to the obvious elephant in the room.

What happened to free speech?

Censorship, regardless of the circumstances, is always wrong because it limits discourse and narrows the bandwidth of social communication. It is never acceptable, regardless of when or where it occurs.

Adorning one's self with the mantle of "appropriateness" begs the essential problem that when we censor anyone censors everyone because the listener never hears what what the speaker intended to say.

Analyze all you want, you cannot escape the fact that free speech restricted is no free speech at all.

When I graduating from high school, in 1966, our valedictorian penned a speech that expressed opposition to the war in Vietnam. The school administration refused to allow him to read the speech. I refused to attend the graduation, not because I agreed with him - I didn't - but because I was angered by the violation of free speech.

Someone will trot out the notion that high school students aren't entitled to free speech, but there are numerous Supreme Court decisions that have held to the contrary.

Kudos to the kid who wrote the first speech, and a small brick bat for giving in to the officiousness of the school officials.

I see nothing appalling about her speech. She is likely directing it to some peers she knows who are intelligent with pie in the sky ideals, who could use the WAKE UP CALL. Got a good education and now it it time to not only Pay the Piper (student loans) but join the Work Force. Good luck on getting one good paying job or even several good paying part-time jobs.

The same is true for some of my own peers. As I myself am considering taking a page from my own 1980's book and looking for several part-time jobs, minus color coding my day planner to have childcare covered.

Encouragement also needs to be rooted in reality as well as hope. Grandma added a dose of You Made Your Bed Now Lay In It.

It is sink or swim now.

As a secondary educator, I find wisdom in the words of your last paragraph.

This is today's public school system...Dumb it down. Make everyone think alike, keep them equal. We opted out of this system 15 years ago with our 7 kids (yes, same wife). They are graduating college at the ages of 18 to 19 with 4.0 GPA's and working on their Master's. No drama, no problem! Acedemic scholarships have covered most of thier expenses. My 16 year old started college this summer. Three more right behind them.
Wake up America and dump the public school system!