When an unplanned event occurs, a certain type of silence descends upon the audience. It was audible at the Jon M. Huntsman Center on Thursday afternoon, somewhere between the dull hum of a basketball arena and the rustle of polyester gowns. At the podium, a man by the name of Gerald Parrott was telling the 9,500 graduates and their families that this was not at all like an AA meeting.
The line fell somewhere between holding one’s breath and laughing. The uniqueness of such a moment at a commencement cannot be overstated. These rituals typically operate somewhat automatically. A celebrity keynote, the procession, the dignitaries, and a few phrases that are repeated from one university to another are all present. Everyone lines up for sheet cake after the caps are raised and the parents start crying on cue. That’s the situation. On rare occasions, however, someone approaches the microphone, causing the room to change.
Parrott, who earned a Bachelor of Science in Criminology, was the student speaker. That’s a neat sentence on paper. In reality, it was a completely different story. He talked about chasing the thing that numbed him the quickest. substances. excessive alcohol consumption. A failed marriage. A job that vanished. Stints in jail and years of homelessness blended into what he called “just existing.” To his credit, he didn’t try to hide that kind of history.
Then came the turn, the moment that would seem fake in a different kind of story. He learned he was going to become a father while incarcerated. Kylo is the name of his son. In some way, that detail is important. The entire arc feels less like a parable and more like a life because of the specificity and everydayness of a child’s name. He returned to Salt Lake Community College with an academic probation contract and a 1.67 GPA, which he described as a gauge of how lost he had been (you could hear the dry self-awareness).
He transferred to the U.S. law school after earning two associate’s degrees, one of which was in social work with honors. Given his background, it makes some bitter sense that he wants to work on criminal justice reform.
The keynote speaker, Arthur Brooks, a professor at Harvard Business School, reportedly abandoned the speech he had prepared. From the stage, he acknowledged that he had been inspired. When a man who has delivered dozens of these speeches decides in the last hour that it would be wiser to follow the child in front of him, there’s something subtly amazing about it. The main theme of Brooks’s final comments was that individuals can improve themselves via hard work, merit, and the communities that support them along the way. It’s an outdated notion. He didn’t act any differently. However, Parrott had recently dressed it.
When you watch something like this, you might be tempted to turn it into a tidy lesson. To put it another way, it symbolizes something more significant about the nation, higher education, or second chances. Perhaps it does. Perhaps it doesn’t. The fact that a man is standing on a stage in front of the largest graduating class in the school’s history—8,723 students from all fifty states and sixty-two countries—telling a room full of strangers that their lowest point may be where the real story begins is more difficult to dispute.
That kind of statement is uncommon at commencements. It is frequently removed because it is too serious, too dangerous, or simply too much. Nevertheless, the room allowed Parrott to say it. That has some value. It’s also possible that the audience members who most needed to hear it were seated in row forty, wearing a borrowed gown, and wondering if their own disorganized line would eventually straighten out. It’s difficult not to believe they most likely will as you watch the entire situation play out.
