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Groton Daily Independent
Sunday, May 13, 2018 ~ Vol. 25 - No. 303 ~ 29 of 32
there,” said Bock, who is researching how and why students decorate their mortarboards.
“But within the last couple of years, those types of assertions — particularly as they relate to citizenship, places of origin, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation — have taken more significance as they move
into this mode of public display.”
Bock has been tracking what students put on their caps through social media posts, as well as by at-
tending commencements, photographing mortarboards and interviewing dozens of students.
Romero, who is earning a degree in human services, has been shielded from deportation and granted a work permit through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. She was able to attend com- munity college and later UNLV because the federal program was authorized shortly after she graduated from high school, allowing her to work sometimes up to three jobs to pay portions of tuition and fees not
covered by scholarships.
She said she looked up quotes to put on her cap for about a semester. She chose to also include mari-
golds — the flowers used to decorate altars for the Day of the Dead — to honor her grandfather, who died last year.
“This quote really resonated with me just because of my parents’ struggles and everything that they had to overcome so that I could graduate,” said Romero, who now works at a law firm and plans to apply to law school. “It pays tribute not just to what I’m doing, but to where I come from and everything that has made me who I am.”
Previous UNLV ceremonies have featured caps with messages like “Si Se Puede, Here To Stay” and “1 ex, 2 kids, 9 jobs, 1 husband, 1 addiction, 13 years, 127 credits, 66K loans = 1 college grad!!!” Last May, a student placed a photo of President Donald Trump next to the question “What does my political science degree mean now?”
Some students leave politics and finances aside, and instead include Bible verses or show their love for each other.
Anna Gingrich and Anthony Bardis will tie the knot a week after graduation. So, she decorated their caps with bridal embellishments. She covered the mortarboards with gold paper that matches the color of her wedding shoes. Hers features a wedding dress and the word “bride,” while his has a tuxedo and “groom.”
“It’s kind of just like professing to the world that graduation isn’t the end for us — we are about to start our lives, and that’s a big deal,” said Gingrich, who is getting a degree in nutrition science and dietetics. “When somebody sees his, I want them to look for mine, and when someone sees mine, I want them to look for his.”
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Follow Regina Garcia Cano on Twitter at https://twitter.com/reginagarciakNO
Bloomberg warns of ‘epidemic of dishonesty’ By STEVE PEOPLES, Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) — Americans are facing an “epidemic of dishonesty” in Washington that’s more danger- ous than terrorism or communism.
That’s according to former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who warned in a commencement speech on Saturday at Texas’ Rice University that “an endless barrage of lies” and a trend toward “alternate realities” in national politics pose a dire threat to U.S. democracy.
The 76-year-old billionaire, who flirted with an independent presidential run in 2016, did not call out any politicians by name.
Although he derided Donald Trump as “a con” and a “dangerous demagogue” before his election, in an interview before the speech Bloomberg refused to comment specifically on the Republican president’s troubled history with the truth. Fact checkers have determined that Trump has made hundreds of false and misleading statements since entering the Oval Office.
“This is bigger than any one person. It’s bigger than any one party,” he said in the interview.
In the speech, Bloomberg evoked the legend of the nation’s first president, George Washington, who as