At this year’s February Celebration Ceremony, student speaker Faith Wood ’24.5 veered off of their previewed script, denouncing Middlebury’s alleged complicity in the war in Gaza and encouraging audience members to withhold their donations from the institution. Wood’s speech followed last spring’s commencement speech by Adayliah Ley ’24, which also criticized the college’s investments in what Middlebury Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) has called war profiteering.
Both speeches have garnered backlash within the Middlebury community and online, prompting the college to reconsider how the May graduation speeches will take place.
Wood began their speech on a sentimental note, drawing from memories of the graduating class’s first days on campus during the pandemic. In the third minute of the speech, their tone pivoted, emphasizing that although the day was a celebration for some, the audience must not forget the tragedies that have taken place on campus and in the world during the past four years.
“Not all of us have the privilege to pretend that graduation could be a celebration. The deaths of three students within our four years and all of the other sinister ways that Middlebury fails its students make this sobering truth abundantly clear. If there’s anything you hear of what I’m saying, let it be this: When our hearts break, let them break open like pomegranates and burst with seeds that take root,” Wood said.
This portion of the speech was posted by X and Instagram by user Eyal Yakoby and reposted by thousands of others who have critiqued Wood’s “woke” rhetoric. The post on X received over 1.5 million views, with the Instagram post receiving thousands of likes.
“Wokeism is a mental illness,” wrote Yakoby, who once attended Middlebury before transferring to the University of Pennsylvania.
A torrent of online criticism followed his posts, with other users criticizing the decision to invoke the war in Gaza at a graduation ceremony and portraying the incident as a symptom of broader national politicization of higher education.
Middlebury is not the only school where commencement ceremonies have included protests or off-script speeches in the past year. Other universities have canceled student speeches and made efforts to bar student protestors from commencement ceremonies. With May commencement almost three months away, Vice President for Student Affairs Smita Ruzicka said that the administration has begun considering new protocols for student commencement speeches, to prevent similar speeches in the future.
“We intend to discuss this issue with the graduating class organization that partners with the administration on commencement and are considering ways to address the problem in the future. We are currently exploring some different options for the speakers for May commencement,” Ruzicka wrote in an email to The Campus.
In addition to receiving backlash for their viewpoints, Wood and Ley’s speeches have raised questions about the future of Middlebury’s student speaker tradition. According to remarks from Interim President Stephen Snyder at the February Celebration, a committee of seniors in discussions facilitated by various administrators has been charged with selecting a representative to speak at Commencement since 2001.
Ruzicka detailed this process in an email to The Campus, explaining that the speakers are selected based on a draft of their speech, which they submit in writing and/or video to the committee. According to Ruzicka, both Wood and Ley’s speeches at the ceremonies were different from those they submitted to the committee.
“For two commencement ceremonies, now, the speakers without informing us in advance have changed their speeches between the time they were selected and the time they stood on the podium,” Ruzicka wrote.
Ruzicka also told The Campus that audience members at both commencement ceremonies found the speeches to be offensive.
When asked what they would say to those who disapproved of their speech, Wood encouraged them to interrogate the root of their discomfort.
“If hearing me say what’s happening around the world and at this College is triggering to you, why don't you use that upset to change what’s happening around the world and at this College, so the truth doesn't make you so uncomfortable anymore?” Wood wrote in an email to The Campus.
Ley also received online backlash after her spring commencement speech but emphasized the importance of standing up for something she believes in.
“The response I received online was scary knowing that a lot of my personal information was available for anyone to access, but it was a risk I was willing to take,” Ley wrote in an email to The Campus.
Ley and Wood both expressed to The Campus that it would have felt wrong not to address the suffering occurring on campus and abroad in their speeches.
“I know that many people think that commencement is not the time and place to say the things that Faith and I said. I disagree… It would've felt wrong to leave Middlebury without acknowledging the good and the bad of my experience as well as what was going on in the lives of people across the world,” Ley wrote.
According to Wood, they asked everyone they interacted with in the weeks leading up to commencement what they wanted to hear at the ceremony.
“What I found is that the people I spoke to were not interested in hearing more bureaucratic, shallow congratulations. They wanted acknowledgement of all of it: of all they gained and all they lost in the role of ‘Middlebury College student,’” Wood wrote.
Correction 2/20/2025: The article has been updated to reflect the fact that speeches submit to the February Celebration speaker committee are rough drafts that are not finalized until the day of the speech.
Maggie Bryan '25 (she/her) is the Senior News Editor.
Maggie is a senior at Middlebury, majoring in Environmental Policy and French. She previously held roles as Senior Arts and Culture Editor, Arts and Culture Editor, and Staff. During her free time, she loves running, listening to live music, drinking coffee, and teaching spin classes. She is from Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
