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Happy birthday Gavin Anthony Timalonis!

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THEIR VIEWA terrible, deadly decision in just 7 seconds

<p>When Principal Jon Pollard cut short the speech of valedictorian and class president Peter Butera at Wyoming Area&#8217;s commencement ceremony last Friday evening by pulling the plug on his microphone, he could not have had any idea the amount of backlash his actions would generate.</p><p>Butera had gone off script from the speech he submitted to administrators and had received permission to deliver at the ceremony. When Pollard realized what the soon-to-be graduate was doing, he made a split-second decision not to allow Butera to continue.</p><p>And now the incident has gone viral, making its way to CNN, the Washington Post and Jimmy Kimmel live.</p><p>Was Pollard wrong?</p><p>Perhaps.</p><p>There is a little thing in this country called the First Amendment that guarantees freedom of speech. However, Butera, not yet a graduate, was still under the jurisdiction of the Wyoming Area administration and was on Wyoming Area property.</p><p>Was Butera wrong?</p><p>Maybe.</p><p>Commencement ceremonies are designed to be formal. They allow members of the senior class to gather one last time in what is supposed to be a formal setting to receive their diplomas before entering the world as adults.</p><p>When beach balls and silly string and bullhorns make their way into a stadium in an attempt to disrupt the formality of the ceremony, administrators have their hands full trying to maintain decorum.</p><p>But, when a class president goes rogue into a microphone for all to hear, administrators don&#8217;t have a whole lot of time to think.</p><p>It turns out what Butera was not allowed to say doesn&#8217;t sound rash &#8211; he didn&#8217;t single out any specific faculty member or administrator &#8211; he simply said he hoped things would change in the district and that those in charge would allow students to have more responsibility so they could grow as leaders.</p><p>But Pollard had no idea what Butera was going to say next. All he knew was that the words coming out of the young man&#8217;s mouth at the time were not the words that had been approved for his commencement speech.</p><p>When Hillary Rodham Clinton delivered this year&#8217;s commencement speech to graduates at Wellesley College, of which she is a 1969 graduate, she used the venue to air her own disagreements with Washington politicians who had just proposed a federal budget, which she called &#8220;an attack of unimaginable cruelty on the most vulnerable among us.&#8221;</p><p>Even the Clinton supporters among us would agree she was out of line by saying, &#8220;It grossly underfunds public education, mental health and efforts even to combat the opioid epidemic. And, in reversing our commitment to fight climate change, it puts the future of our nation and our world at risk.&#8221;</p><p>The Wellesley College commencement ceremony, or any commencement ceremony, for that matter, was not the place for Clinton to attack the current government. Given the fact that she had lost the presidential election just seven months earlier made her speech sound like not much more than sour grapes.</p><p>Peter Butera should have chosen a different venue to air his grievances against the Wyoming Area School District faculty and administration.</p><p>We&#8217;re left to wonder whether he ever attended a school board meeting to address his concerns. If he was looking for notoriety, he surely would have gotten it there as reporters attend those meetings and would have been only too happy to allow him 15 minutes of fame.</p><p>Instead, he went off script, never to finish &#8212; at least not that night &#8212; what he intended to say. And Jon Pollard made a decision he may live to regret. By cutting Butera&#8217;s microphone, he&#8217;s given him an even larger audience than he had at the Wyoming Area commencement ceremony.</p><p>So, in the end, who really won?</p><p><em> &#8212; Times Leader</em></p><style>
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Our Opinion: Graduation ceremony not venue to ‘go rogue’