Graduating students of the University Of Notre Dame reportedly walked out of their own graduation ceremony — in protest to US Vice President Mike Pence giving the celebrated event's commencement speech.
A petition not to invite Donald Trump
The University Of Notre Dame has always invited the newly inaugurated U.S. President to give the graduation commencement speech when the president is still in the first year of office. But this year, a staggering amount of students and even faculty members of the Catholic university signed a petition addressed to the institution's president Rev.
John Jenkins. The petition specifically asked Jenkins not to invite current U.S. President Donald Trump.
This resulted in the University inviting Vice-President Mike Pence instead, a former governor of Indiana.
However, this became its own backlash. It turns out that a student coalition named "We StaND For" has already planned a protest by walking out, with the reasoning that the current U.S. Vice-President pursued policies that "targeted the most vulnerable," while he was still in office as a governor of the state of Indiana.
What's more, faculty members and school officials knew about the ensuing walkout protest, yet made no attempt to stop it. It was reported that about a hundred students out of a few thousand walked out.
A few boos were heard, but only briefly.
Mike Pence not the first one to receive protest
Apparently, this was not a new thing for the Catholic University. When former president Barack Obama delivered his speech in 2009, hundreds of student activists against abortion also protested. Joe Biden's 2016 commencement speech was also met with some smaller protests like this current one for Mike Pence.
Paul Brown, Notre Dame's vice-president for public affairs and communications, said that they allow protests to take place, as long as the act does not actually disrupt the ceremony.
As for Pence's speech itself, many noticed that it contained a lot of similarities to one he gave earlier at Grove City College, a Christian school in Pennsylvania.
It was reported that Pence even used "similar language" — for instance, his urging the students to "become leaders in various walks of life."
Mike Pence had originally planned to get re-elected as governor, but he was unpopular in his home state at the time that many thought he would lose the re-election bid. In the summer of 2016, Donald Trump offered him to be the running mate in his presidential campaign.
