"We should embrace the change to grow and to serve, we should pursue these opportunities with humility and grace," says DeVos in the closing of her speech. "Approach the unexpected and unforeseen with grace. DeVos says the startling polarization across the United States is visible on social media and news networks. "We will not solve the significant problems our country faces if we can not bring ourselves to embrace a mindset of grace," says DeVos. "Our nation has made remarkable progress, but addressing inequities remains a challenge," DeVos tells students. "America is too great a country to deny any child this equal opportunity," she adds.

What she should have done is been bold enough to tell these students why it is that she had the gall to show up and ruin their day in the first place. After all, it’s unbelievable that she would actually show up and feel compelled to lecture these students, many of whom are likely first generation college students, about grace and humility and opportunity. Talk about privilege. This whole sham of an event was preceded by the school president, with Trump lackey Omarosa Manigault (who of course is sent anywhere that black people are) at his side setting the stage by threatening the students that graduation would be canceled if they didn’t quiet down.

A huge chorus of boos erupted when DeVos was awarded an honorary doctorate, and again when she said she would visit the home of school founder Mary McLeod Bethune to pay her respects. School president Edison Jackson threatened to end graduation and mail degrees to student "choose which way you're going to go," he says. Omarosa Manigault, a political aide to Mr. Trump was present at the graduation ceremony, and received a round of audible boos from the audience when introduced by the school's president. "You don't know her and you don't know her story," said Bethune-Cookman's president Dr. Edison O. Jackson in response to the disruption.

Actually, we know enough about Omarosa and Betsy to know that they really don’t care anything about the success, education, and well-being of black students and shouldn’t have been anywhere near this commencement ceremony. Shame on the school’s administration for putting some bizarre form of respectability politics and proximity to the Trump administration before the needs of the students and community they serve. These scholars are to be celebrated and commended. They got their degrees in spite of the very obstacles that someone like Betsy DeVos represents. And they modeled the incredible legacy of black activism that Mary McLeod Bethune Cookman, who was known as “the First Lady of the Struggle,” embodied.

Watch them brilliantly stand up to Betsy here: