Student Activities Coordinator April Nakamura said that seniors who have the opportunity to give speeches have to earn it.

On April 22, seniors interested in giving speeches during commencement attended a meeting in Student Activities. This is important to many seniors since commencement is a time for them to address their peers, teachers and families.

Anyone can audition to make a speech but only a few can actually give the speech. There will be major and minor speaking roles. The major speeches are the ones written by the seniors chosen, while the minor ones are about the necessary information. There are seven speaking slots, but not necessarily seven different people giving speeches. One person may give two speeches, but never two major speeches.

In addition to filling out a student profile, seniors interested are required to compose their own speech; they are not allowed to plagiarize. They will have tryouts reading their own sample speech about what they are the most proud of being a McKinley Tiger.

Senior Jin Ling Yan said that she wanted to make a speech “because I spent all four years here and wanted to make a long-lasting impression on people.”

Despite the pride that results from giving a speech, some factors outweigh its importance. Skylynne Ly had planned on giving a speech. She said, “I am interested in doing the speech because I have worked really hard all four years of my high school career. There have been ups and downs and times when I wished I could just give up but I didn’t. Doing this speech, I feel will help embody the struggles I had in high school, but also embody how because of those struggles I am stronger as a person.”

However, due to problems on her financial aid, Ly had to give up on her speech to work on scholarships.

She said, “Scholarships were still an option for me and it would get me money for college to help support my family so I chose to spend time finding new scholarships and working on them than doing my paper for the speech.”

Nakamura said, “In the past, … it was based on who spoke best. Every year we got some speakers up there who did nothing for their class or their school, didn’t contribute in any way but they could speak very well so they got to speak for their class and it bothered me.”

There will be six seniors speaking at Commencement: Jin Ling Yan, Mark Buenafe, Yueqing Lin, Mahealani Wilson, Dayonara Gaoteote and Joanne Khau. One of them will have two speaking roles.