Bridgewater-Raynham Superintendent And School Committee Chair Give Drunk, Incoherent, Hilarious Graduation Speeches 

 

Watch my analysis of the speech Tuesday at 9 on our YouTube channel. Subscribe here.

I’ve always thought graduations were stupid. Unless you’re the valedictorian, the class president, or you’re receiving some sort of personal award there’s really no reason to show up at all. It’s not even a celebration of mediocrity, because mediocrity is a C average. To graduate from high school you just have to get a bunch of 60’s. In reality you just need like a 55 and a good personality and your teachers are gonna pass you. In order to do that you just do a couple homework assignments here and there, get a bunch of 50’s for quiz grades, and then get the 10 free points for “class participation.” Boom – high school graduate.

But sometimes graduations are more entertaining than others. This is Bridgewater-Raynham Superintendent Derek Swenson.

Over the weekend B-R Regional High School held their graduation and Swenson apparently decided to calm his nerves before the ceremony by having a drink….or ten. Around the 43:30 mark he stands up to deliver his speech after the class president’s speech, and it’s just an amazing work of art that you have to watch for yourself to truly appreciate:

In case there was any doubt that he was completely bombed, he started off the speech with a bang:

“I would like to thank this op-tunity to welcome parents, family, friends, dignitaries, and of chorus all of the wonderful mmllllll-immigri-mayors-of-the-uh-the 2013-uh-2022 graduating class of Bridgewater-Ranium.”

Apparently they discovered a a new element on the periodic table, and they named a regional high school after it.

Some more highlights:

45:30 (while introducing a high achieving student): “He always adds his positive and intellectual comments to every discus……..sin.”

“We wish him the best with all of his academic and future envaries”

46:10 – “Hannah was a member of the non-itional-ayonce society.”

48:30 – “Holly will be attended Skidmore College in the fall, majoring in bile-g.”

49:10 – “Social-motional growth”

51:40 – “Needle-is to say”

 

53:30 – “In my humble ob…pin….”

“Many martyrn day life is hard issues….”

57:45 – “bridge the grade divide that currently exists”

Yikes.

But it looks like he wasn’t the only one hitting the sauce during the pregame. This is School Committee Chair Lillian Holbrook, a 30 year elementary school teacher in the district.

She started speaking at the 1:04:30 mark and managed to make Joe Biden sound sharp and articulate.

Some highlights from the patron saint of boxed wine:

1:04:50 – “you should all be very proud for achieving one of life’s most import…..portant milestones.”

Important is a difficult word.

“Tonight as you stand on the thresh….hold….adulthood.”

Pretty sure the word she was looking for there was, “of,” which is a real tongue twister.

1:05:30 – “I don’t think I ever encountered a single book with as much useful information as all I re…me…need to know, I learned in kinder-garter”

1:06:15 – “more im-pour-in-lee”

1:11:25 – “the under-lund concept still remains”

“Take every opportuh-noo……..”

Apparently she pulled all-nighter and hit up the club after that because she was posting about how awesome the graduation was at 2:49 AM.

We’ll be breaking the highlights again on the Live Show tonight at 9 PM, and I’ll be sharing some more of my thoughts at that time. Click here to subscribe to our YouTube channel and never miss an episode.

I don’t know what the proper punishment is here, but if a kid showed up to the prom this drunk they would’ve been banned from the graduation. It makes no sense at all for kids to be held to a higher standard than the adults who are paid to be a good example for them. Did they drive home? The two of them were sitting next to each other during the commencement and appeared to be having a great time. Props to them both for walking up the stairs without falling on their faces, I guess.

On the bright side for them, she’s elected by the same people who re-elected Ted Kennedy a thousand times, and his boss is her. So she’s gonna have a tough time firing the guy she was taking shots of Fireball with prior to giving that speech.

Fun fact – South Shore Turtlegirl called out Derek Swenson in a 2017 blog, which was the first we ever published about Monica Cannon-Grant. Back then an elementary school teacher in Bridgewater was being doxxed and threatened by one of Monica’s online mobs after the Plymouth Plantation came to a classroom to do a demonstration on 17th century children’s walking tethers and a black girl volunteered to play the part of the baby. The rest was history:

Race baiters from Shaun King to Tony Branch jumped all over that one:

Those were the same memories that came to mind for Tony Branch, a Brockton resident who chairs the city’s Diversity Commission. For him, the photo initially raised more questions than answers.

“I was disgusted,” he said. “One of the things I was concerned about from the photo itself is that they were already in costumes, so obviously this had to be a pre-approved educational event. Why would someone not see this as being insensitive?”

Although the photo was taken in a classroom at the Mitchell Elementary School in the Bridgewater-Raynham district, Branch plans to raise the issue at a city meeting in early November in hopes he never sees a similar photo taken in Brockton a school.

“This should not have been seen as OK. I understand there are earlier photos of white children doing the exercise, but it doesn’t matter,” Branch said. “It never should have happened. There is no educational value in this at all with a student of color participating.”

Imagine a teacher being lectured by a pedophile about what is and isn’t OK to do with children? That girl was almost old enough to be Tony Branch’s girlfriend, and according to him and Monica the teacher was supposed to tell her, “sorry little girl, but you can’t play the baby because you’re black, and a bunch of race baiting douchebags will exploit you for personal gain, so only white kids get to participate.”

Instead of standing up for the teacher Swenson offered this weak reply:

Swenson, who did not specify in which school the photo was taken, acknowledged that it “could be perceived differently” without proper context, calling it an “unfortunate incident.”

In 2018 Swenson banned seniors from selling class shirts that said, “Pulling out just in time,” with a car on the front, because it was sexually inappropriate for a school called the “Trojans” to talk about pulling out.

“I then confirmed that with the high school and, at that point, decided that that was not the type of material I wanted on the back of a T-shirt that represents not only the Bridgewater-Raynham Regional High School, but that represents the district as a whole,” he said. “We hold ourselves to high standards in character and that did not reflect what we are truly about here in Bridgewater-Raynham.”

You hold yourself to a higher standard of character? Bruh, you and your BOSS on the School Committee got plastered before graduation and rambled on incoherently for 15 minutes each as a bunch of kids silently laughed and uploaded highlights to Snapchat. You’re a funny story they’ll tell in college now that their friends won’t believe until they see it. But please, tell me more about how students represent the district poorly with funny t-shirts.