Graduations are a time to hear inspirational stories of dreaming big and working hard to overcome adversity. However, the OPRF graduation is not the place for a woke school board member to indoctrinate others. In an incoherent stream of consciousness, Mary Anne Mohranaj has suggested abolishing borders, abolishing prisons, free school, and no school.
Her vision is people aiming toward so-called “bigger changes” that question the status quo. She asked who is excluded by our country’s immigration laws and should we have borders at all? Her words implicitly pushed an anti-American agenda to our graduates, suggesting America has a xenophobic immigration policy and that those graduates should support open borders. However, she failed to mention: that illegal border crossings hit their highest recorded level in history last year; or that fentanyl is pouring through our Southern border.
Mohanraj then argues that larger questions can be obscured. She proposed maybe we’ll abolish prisons and seriously reconsider what led us to set up those prisons in the first place. I believe that the increase in America’s homicide rate may provide a clue behind America’s need to incarcerate murderers.
She posited that maybe society should invest in education and that society will pay for any class you want to take at any point in your life. This view ignores the unfairness of people without college degrees bankrolling someone else’s degree.
Later, Mohanraj proposed that maybe we should get rid of school altogether and find a new way to educate everyone. Her statements about no tuition and no school are contradictory. The only thing those positions share in common are that they’re both ridiculous.
Our high school graduates deserve a speech full of hope, not delusions. Mohanraj’s dreams for our graduates are actually an American nightmare.
Jonathan Panton
Oak Park and River Forest High School
Class of 2017
