‘Get off the stage!’ Crowd yells at commencement speaker after she uses Spanish, mentions TrumpBy Susan Svrluga May 24 at 7:20 PM
Univision anchor booed during commencement speech
Play Video2:02
When Univision anchor Maria Elena Salinas mentioned Donald Trump during her commencement speech at the School of Communications at California State University, Fullerton on May 22, she was met with boos from students. Later, a woman can be heard yelling, "Get off the stage." (California State University, Fullerton)
Some people in the crowd at a graduation ceremony at California State University, Fullerton, shouted at the commencement speaker after she talked about presidential candidate Donald Trump and gave a brief section of her address in Spanish.
“It’s really sad,” the commencement speaker, Maria Elena Salinas, an anchor for Spanish language broadcast network Univision, said Tuesday. “And it’s a testament to what has happened in our country. Our country is really divided.”
Salinas gave the keynote address to the entire university Sunday morning, was presented with an honorary doctorate, and spoke some words in Spanish to the parents of graduates. The student body is 40 percent Hispanic, and she felt the speech was well-received; several students thanked her afterward for addressing their parents in their native language. University leaders had encouraged her to say a few words in Spanish, she said; the school is a national leader in the number of Hispanic graduates it produces.
NEW YORK, NY - MAY 17: Journalist Maria Elena Salinas attends Univision's 2016 Upfront Red Carpet at Gotham Hall on May 17, 2016 in New York City. (Photo by Mike Coppola/Getty Images)
Journalist Maria Elena Salinas attends Univision’s 2016 Upfront Red Carpet at Gotham Hall on May 17, 2016 in New York City. (Photo by Mike Coppola/Getty Images)
But when she spoke to the College of Communications in a separate ceremony later that morning, the reaction seemed quite different.
Denise De La Cruz, a graduating senior who wrote about it for the OC Weekly described it this way:
Salinas’ speech was well-received until it became a little too Latino-centric for some and blatantly anti-Trump. The Univision broadcaster began specifically congratulating Latino journalism graduates for what seemed like a large chunk of her speech. She then began speaking in Spanish … This left non-journalism grads and non-Latinos/non-Spanish speakers feeling excluded. Parents in the audience and even students in the ceremony began demanding Salinas switch to a more inclusive tone by shouting phrases such as, “What about us?!”
Tensions worsened as Salinas began offering advice to journalism students to use the tools of media to rebut political figures such as Donald Trump. That’s when folks began yelling things to Salinas such as, “Get off the stage!” and “Trash!”
More at link
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/05/24/commencement-speaker-gets-booed-after-speaking-briefly-in-spanish-and-criticizing-trump/
