On April 28, Christopher Pan, an entrepreneur, investor, and former Facebook program manager, sent a spreadsheet to Ohio State University staff members.
Pan, an Ohio State alumnus, was one week away from giving the commencement address to graduates of the Class of 2024. He wanted to make an impression, but the university would only give him 10 minutes to do so. It didn’t seem like enough time, so Pan tallied the runtimes of memorable commencement speeches he could find on the internet. Steve Jobs at Stanford University: 15 minutes and four seconds. Tom Hanks at Harvard University: 22 minutes and 16 seconds. Will Ferrell at the University of Southern California: a whopping 25 minutes.
Ohio State did not respond to the list, so Pan followed up with more names. In 2013, Ohio State gave President Barack Obama a whole 26 minutes and 26 seconds. “I am curious,” Pan wrote, “how did you arrive at 10 minutes for the length?”
In the end, Pan spoke for more than 15 minutes. To be more precise, he sang, danced, hawked Bitcoin, and waxed didactic on conflict resolution. The crowd booed, and Pan’s speech — which he later said he wrote while on ayahuasca — went viral for all the reasons one does not want their speech to go viral.
Correspondence obtained by The Chronicle through an open-records request reveals that the conversation preceding the event was just as unusual as the speech itself, which was first reported on by The Columbus Dispatch. (An online Ohio publication, The Rooster, previously sued the university over releasing the records.) Among other things, Pan asked if Ohio State could arrange for fireworks to go off and for the marching band to appear. (The university said no to both.)
A spokesman for Ohio State, Benjamin Johnson, said in an email that after all large campus events, officials discuss possible changes or improvements; he declined to go into more detail, and noted that the university has held two commencements (in the summer and winter) since last spring. Pan, however, told The Chronicle he would have done some things differently.
‘Your Messages Are Surprising’
In March, Ohio State reached out to Pan, saying the community had nominated him to be the commencement speaker and that the president, Walter (Ted) Carter Jr., was excited to invite him. (WOSU Public Media later reported that Pan’s name hadn’t been on the list assembled by an advisory committee, though it had appeared on previous years’ lists. Carter’s office was responsible for the choice, the station reported.)
In early April, following up on a conversation they’d had with Pan, Ohio State officials directed him to make his commencement address a “traditional 10-minute speech,” touching on his journey and nonprofit inspirational-bracelet company.
Responding to his desire to sing and dance during the speech, Hannah Bechtold, senior director of administration and operations in the president’s office at Ohio State, invited Pan to sing and dance at a rehearsal with graduating students a few days before the graduation. It made more sense, she wrote, given the “ceremonial elements and logistical challenges” of commencement.
I am not interested in giving a speech. I am beyond thrilled for the opportunity to change lives.
Pan says he told Ohio State from the very beginning that he was interested in singing and dancing, but they were hesitant, hence the back and forth.
At corporate and higher-education engagements, “I typically incorporate some movement, some singing, and then also a message,” Pan says. “It’s sort of my formula. When they booked me, I thought that’s what they wanted. Why would you book me if that’s authentic to me?”
A few weeks later, Pan asked the university if he could play two one-minute-long songs: the spiritual “This Little Light of Mine” and 4 Non Blondes’ “What’s Up.”
“These are both very intentionally designed as part of my overall obsession with delivering maximum transformation,” Pan wrote. “I am not interested in giving a speech. I am beyond thrilled for the opportunity to change lives.”
It seemed Ohio State had gotten more than it bargained for. “Your messages are surprising,” Bechtold replied, “and we need to virtually meet quickly to discuss.” They coordinated timing for a meeting, after which Pan sent a few confusing emails, commenting on U.S. aid to Ukraine and Israel (“we are a few tweets from a massive catastrophe if we dont [sic] wake people up”) and sharing a quote about the benefits of singing and dancing.
“I was feeling a sense of urgency, because we hadn’t finalized what I could and couldn’t do,” Pan says. “In the moment, if you rewind back to that time … it was just feeling like the world was on fire.” He saw singing, dancing, and meditation as tools for healing ourselves and the world.
Later that week, Pan asked how much it would cost for fireworks to go off during “This Little Light of Mine” and if the marching band could perform a drum roll and “simple melody” for a magic trick involving Bitcoin. “The vision,” he wrote, “is more ‘half-time show.’”
“Unfortunately, we cannot arrange for fireworks at one week out,” Bechtold wrote, adding that the marching band was not available. Pan replied by pointing to a diagram he received showing that a “band” would be adjacent to the speaker, to which Bechtold clarified: “That is a performance band contracted for defined traditional elements of the ceremony.”
Between April 29 and May 1, Pan sent his contacts at Ohio State several drafts of his speech. In one, he waded into the Israel and Gaza war, leading the crowd in chants of “Salam Shalom,” Arabic and Hebrew words, respectively, for peace. Students at Ohio State had set up an encampment calling for divestment from Israel the week before, but police disbanded it in April, arresting dozens.
“I had been working with both Israeli and Palestinian communities in [Los Angeles], so it was something that was very close to my heart,” Pan says. Ultimately, he left Israel and Gaza out of the speech after soliciting feedback from parents of the graduating students, he says.
The university, for its part, didn’t offer much feedback on the drafts of the unconventional speech, according to the emails. Although at one point Bechtold asked that Pan not thank her and her colleagues in the address. “Your acknowledgment is appreciated, but we prefer to remain in the background,” she wrote.
In retrospect, Pan says he thinks he tried to cram too much into a short period of time (he was only given 10 minutes, after all). He says he might have cut out the Bitcoin and singing parts and concentrated on helping students choose a word to appear on their MyIntent bracelets, which he comped for each graduating student.
“In marketing, people always want to do something a little different that has never been done before,” Pan says. “I think that part of me maybe got in the way of an occasion that tends to want more tradition.”
Still, he says he received a lot of positive feedback, which he took screenshots of and sent to The Chronicle via Google Drive. In one of the messages, apparently on LinkedIn, someone wrote, “Dude. Howard Stern talked about you for 5 mins yesterday. It was great.”
Andy Thomason contributed reporting.
