“In 24 years at Montana Tech, I’ve never heard about faculty or students boycotting a grad ceremony. It’s unprecedented,” said Pat Munday, the head of the technical communications department. “Do we want to give people with those extreme social conservative views a platform and legitimize them as graduation speakers?”

Greg Gianforte said the speech he and his wife are planning is strictly about engineering and how to be successful.

“My wife is going to talk about her educational career as a mechanical engineer, and specifically the uniqueness of being a woman engineer and the opportunities that created in her career,” he said. “I’m also an engineer. That’s why we have such synergy with the Diggers. I want to talk about a couple of lessons I’ve learned and provide that advice to graduates to help them find satisfaction and contentment in their work.”

He said he and his wife are not in favor of discrimination.

“This is all much ado about nothing,” he said. “At RightNow we employed gays and we ran a complete meritocracy. This will not be any part of the presentation at Tech. We won’t do anything to embarrass the faculty or Butte or Montana Tech.”

But some on campus are already cringing.