Comic Duo to Give Duke Student Commencement Address
The two seniors practiced with the women's basketball team and produced parody videos.
Thursday, May 8, 2008
print
|
email
|
digg
|
del.icio.us
Durham, NC -- It is only fitting that seniors Matt Zafirovski and Kyle Knight are teaming up to deliver this year’s student commencement speech on Sunday.
Zafirovski and Knight have been together since their freshmen year at Duke, when they were roommates. Over the last four years, they have developed a friendship and shared sense of humor.
“We’re pretty good at making fun of each other behind closed doors. So we thought, maybe doing that in public other people would enjoy it,” said Knight, of Winthrop, Maine.
The two say their commencement speech reflects on how failure and rejection can provide texture to life at college and beyond.
“Every kid has failed in some way,” said Zafirovski, who is from Chicago. “And so we’re going to get up there and say, ‘We’re not perfect -– not by any stretch of the imagination -- but we tried some things that didn’t work out and tried other things that totally worked, and we had a great time doing it.’”
Sterly Wilder, executive director of alumni affairs and chair of the committee that selected the dual speech, said the two young men possess “good chemistry. They have a good story. We thought the theme was something that could be applicable for undergraduates and graduates.”
At Duke, the two young men, both more than six feet tall, assisted the women’s basketball team by playing in the team’s practice scrimmages. They worked together creating parody videos, including one called “The Allen Building” that starred Duke President Richard H. Brodhead and his senior leadership team. They both also assisted Durham high school students with college applications through the Duke Black Law Students Association.
Knight, who will graduate with a major in cultural anthropology and a minor in philosophy, spent four years with the student comedy group Inside Joke. After spending a semester studying abroad in Nepal, he returned to that country on a grant from the Duke Global Health Institute to study the social stigma surrounding disabilities.
Zafirovski will graduate with a major in public policy and a markets and management certificate. Through the Hart Leadership program, he spent a summer in Chicago learning about the city’s inner-city schools.
