It’s so predictable. After four years of Ohio State taking a collective crap on everything that once made this place great, we should have seen this last thumb-in-the-eye coming.The final speech graduates of the Class of 2000 will hear won’t be the reassuring stories of an alumnus done good, the calming quips of a comedian or the inspirational words of a famous statesman. Instead, OSU chose to provide the pulpit of the largest graduation celebration in the nation to an opportunistic conservative extremist, known only to a handful of students for either his exploits on the college football field or his famous insult to veteran civil rights leaders that they are “race-hustling poverty pimps.”In truth, J.C. Watts and OSU are perfect for each other.Both Watts and OSU value money over ideals, selling out their pasts to make a buck in the future. Both use athletics to achieve this end. Both are insensitive to the people on whose backs their glories were built, oblivious to the hopes and dreams of those who can’t help them get ahead. Both specialize in double-talk and hypocrisy.Julius Caesar Watts Jr. was the fifth of six children born to a family whose breadwinner was a policeman and part-time farmer in rural Oklahoma. Watts is most famous for leading his college to consecutive Orange Bowl victories as quarterback of the University of Oklahoma Sooners in the early ’80s. After that, he played several lackluster seasons in the Canadian Football League before turning to politics.Watts has pounded the speakers’ trail in the last several years as the darling of an ultraconservative Republican Congress eager to advertise the only black face in its ranks. In one speech, usually given to students, he preaches about the “three lies.” Maybe he’ll deliver a similar speech to us.Watts argues three lies have lead to America’s moral decay. The first lie: “I am entitled to one mistake.”J.C. Watts fathered not one but two children at the tender age of 18. Lucky to be from a loving family, Watts gave one of the children to his uncle to raise. Two years later, he married the mother of the other child and is still with her today.We shouldn’t look down on Watts for fathering children out of wedlock while he was still a child himself. What’s offensive is the hypocrisy of it all, the do-as-we-say-not-as-we-do attitude that is the ugliest element of the Christian Right. It was epitomized by Watts and his Republican colleagues in the impeachment debacle: Overthrow the president but ignore the fact we’ve made the same transgressions.But Watts’ more disappointing mistakes came when he was old enough to know better. After retiring from pro football, Watts piled up a mountain of debt and unpaid taxes through failed ventures in the oil business. He then decided he would take a shot at politics. In a state much like ours, where football fervor reigns supreme over common sense, his gridiron glories were a sure key to an off-field victory.He had one quarterback sneak left in him. Forsaking the advice of his father – who later said that a black “voting for the Republican ticket is like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders” – Watts in 1989 changed his registration to Republican. The next year, he was elected to the Oklahoma State Corporation Commission.Apparently, being in the GOP was more conducive to receiving stacks of cash on the sly. As chairman of the commission, Watts was the object of an FBI corruption probe for receiving bribes from the industry he regulated. He was caught on tape telling a utilities industry attorney that getting an envelope packed with $1,500 in cold cash was a “good deal.”The second lie: “It could never happen to me.” Watts was never prosecuted and later was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.Since then, he has been a party-line supporter of Newt Gingrich’s Contract on America. He’s appeared in ads for the National Rifle Association. He was voted the Christian Coalition’s “Friend of the Family.” He’s a family friend in the same way OSU is a friend to the families of its bus drivers, lunch ladies and janitors.After squeezing them to settle for barely living wages, OSU chose a man who is against virtually any government assistance of the poor as its Spring Commencement speaker. After all the issues that arose from the strike about our university’s support of its minority employees and students, OSU chose a man who supports Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s dismantling of affirmative-action programs in its university system to deliver the keynote speech of the year.The third lie: “I’ve got plenty of time.”My time at OSU is nearing a close. I’ve seen my school give up on its land-grant mission of opening up a broad variety of educational opportunities to the masses for a narrow appeal to money-making excesses.I’ve seen multimillion-dollar palaces for sports and business erected while my major and others that don’t bring in the bucks crumbled. I’ve seen the electricity of independent High Street businesses replaced with the bland corporate sameness of chain stores. Idealistically, I thought at least graduation would be different. Instead, OSU screwed us one last time.I’ll be at the graduation ceremonies, but I’m taking an exit when J.C. Watts comes on stage. I’m trying to help recruit an OSU janitor as an alternate commencement speaker for those of us who want someone with relevance to our lives to be the last words we hear as students.Goodbye, OSU. Goodbye, Ohio. I want to love you, but you keep letting me down.
Nathan Crabbe is a senior journalism major from Akron. After graduation, he is moving to the San Francisco Bay Area to work as a reporter for a daily community newspaper.