Getty Image / John Greim / LightRocket
Thomas Jefferson University has been forced to issue an apology after the school became arguably the most talked about higher education institution in America over the weekend. A quick look at Google Trends confirmed this as ‘Thomas Jefferson University’ has never been more searched or talked about online until this past weekend.
The apology came about after a graduation announcer tasked with reading off the names of Jefferson College of Nursing graduates used phonetic spelling and proceeded to completely and utterly botch every single name in a way that shouldn’t be humanly possible.
Thomas Jefferson University / X
After one student named ‘Thomas’ corrected the speaker, following a series of the most asininely pronounced names imaginable, the speaker apologized. They were eventually removed from announcing names and cited the phonetic spelling on the cards as the underlying reason for the mispronunciations but there have been a few of those phonetic spelling cards floating around on social media and it simply does not add up.
Here is a YouTube clip of the speaker botching the names in ways that shouldn’t even been possible:
How do you mess up Sarah so badly? And Thomas? The school has ‘Thomas’ in its name and she couldn’t pronounce Thomas??? The phonetic spelling of Thomas is not ‘Ta-Moo-May’ it is ‘TAW-muhs’ or ‘TOM-uhs.’ Something went very wrong with this entire production.
Making this all more embarrassing is the fact that the speaker is a very intelligent person. She is reportedly a Ph.D and one of the nursing professors. Presumably, she would have known at least a handful of the students whose names she was reading. So it all feels like someone set her up for failure somehow and we the people need to see just how bad the phonetic spelling was printed on the middle of the graduation cards.
Graduation is a very special time. It’s a shame this turned into a sketch from Key & Peele:
Ultimately, I’m sure the graduates will look back on the moment and laugh as it was a funny last moment in school but the embarrassment of being the most-talked about school in America because of how bad graduation went over the weekend, that stings.
All things considered, the graduation probably still went better than Duke University’s graduation with Jerry Seinfeld as the commencement speaker…