"Oh, Those Well-Educated Princeton Students" Dept

Over at ATB, Jeremyyakovka posted a comment in which he parenthetically said of James Burnham, "I keep hearing his name. The New Criterion published an appreciation of him a few years ago: he delivered a valedictory address at Princeton -- in Latin!" Clearly Jeremy was impressed.

Clearly Jeremy doesn't know Princeton.

So I enlightened him:

Jeremy,

Never be too impressed because you hear that someone has delivered a valedictory address in Latin at Princeton, for two reasons.

1. It's the salutatorian's speech that's given in Latin, not the valedictorian's. Though to be the salutatorian at Princeton is, I grant you, intrinsically impressive.

2. Every salutatorian gives his speech in Latin, including those who don't know Latin -- which is most of them. (A fellow classics major gave the salutatorian's speech my senior year, and it was a hilarious piece of work, but only myself and the other six or seven classics majors knew how funny it was.) The vast majority of Princeton graduates are unable to read their own diplomas. Yet the salutatorian's speech must, by tradition, be given in Latin.

So the salutatorian (when he isn't a classics major) writes his speech in English and takes it to the classics professors, who translate it for him.

It's still a very impressive sight for the parents, though. When your kid is graduating from Princeton, you take your seat in the bleachers with your program, and the music starts playing, and the graduates including your kid march in and sit down. And then you get to the one line in your program that says, "Salutatorian's speech," and you're blown away by how smart these kids are -- because the salutatorian stands up and gives this speech in Latin, much to the enjoyment and amusement of all those well-educated Princeton students, who laugh at the jokes and cheer at the parts that talk about how smart they all are or whatever the hell it is the salutatorian is saying, not that you have a clue because you, not having a Princeton education yourself, can't understand Latin.

What you don't know is that the graduates' programs are not like yours. Where your program says, "Salutatorian's speech," their program has the entire speech written out word for word. With footnotes. Footnotes that say things like, "Laugh here," and, "Cheer here..."

[grinning] When I think of Princeton -- which I have visited exactly once since I walked gratefully off of its grounds back on June 6 of 1989 -- that seems (unfairly, I know) to pretty much sum up the pretentiousness of the institution...and the degree to which the pretentiousness seemed to me unjustified. Though I have to say that the classics department rocked; so at least the six or seven of us in that major got good educations.