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Posted: 8:28 PM- OREM - About 50 Brigham Young University graduates walked not through the Marriott Center on campus Thursday evening, but the McKay Events Center at Utah Valley State College.
As part of an alternative graduation ceremony for students seeking a place away from Vice President Dick Cheney's speech, Ralph Nader encouraged graduates and more than a thousand supporters to seek a higher road and not be enticed by material promises.
The former presidential candidate said in a press conference prior to his speech that students should not underestimate their significance as civic leaders.
"Unfortunately when you're in the top one or two percent, you tend to be enticed by jobs that can be described as ones that give you a combination of trivia and material well-being," Nader said.
He discouraged students from using computer science degrees to develop "silly or violent video games" and warned against becoming physicists or chemists to make chemical, biological or other weapons for munitions corporations.
Nader lambasted Cheney and praised the students who were courageous enough to speak out, even in the reddest county in the nation.
"Out East, the media thinks if BYU students are protesting, then the situation has to be pretty bad," Nader said. "And it is. You're dealing with the most impeachable regimes ever on most fronts."
Nader added that the students are reflecting a sense of gravity far in advance of their elders at the university and around the country.
As for Cheney's draw to BYU, Nader said the reasoning was quite simple: it's tradition.
"With about 70 percent [of the populace] against the war and 20 percent approval rating, it's hard to find a venue, so you ask to be invited," Nader said. "Where do you go? Where the voting turnout was the highest for you in the prior election."
Reem Yahia, an international student from Palestine, went to BYU commencement because her family had traveled to see her graduation.
But she left BYU's ceremony early and came to UVSC.
"I didn't want Cheney to spoil it," she said.
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