Ohio State's 2024 spring commencement speaker Chris Pan set out to give an even more unorthodox speech to the large crowd of graduates and their families than what he eventually delivered in early May.
Early drafts of Pan's speech and his email communications with university staff were obtained by WOSU via a public records request. Pen is a social entrepreneur.
Drafts of Pan's speech reveal he initially wanted a fireworks display during the middle of the day, a drumroll utilizing the Ohio State University Marching Band for a magic trick and extensive mentions of Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza.
The speech did end up including a sales pitch for Bitcoin complete with a magic trick and two songs that he attempted to lead the crowd in. Those two songs were 4 Non Blonde's "What's Up" and the inspirational tune "This Little Light of Mine."
Since Pan's speech, the university has had two other commencement speakers for their summer and fall commencements. Those included Professor Angus Fletcher in August and community advocate and Olympian Stephanie Hightower in December.
The mythos around Pan's speech has only grown since May. It was revealed that Pan took hallucinogenic drugs to help him write the speech. WOSU learned he was not on the initial list of speakers recommended to the university by the OSU's Commencement Speaker Advisory Committee.
Pan told university staff he didn't want to give a speech, but instead he wanted to deliver "maximum transformation."
"The the vision is more 'half-time show,'" Pan said when asking for fireworks and the marching band. OSU's Senior Director of Administration and Operations Hannah Bechtold told Pan a week before the ceremony neither of those requests would be possible.
"Unfortunately, we cannot arrange for fireworks at one week out. The marching band won't be available for commencement activities because many of the members will be graduating and celebrating their accomplishments," Bechtold said.
Pan did call upon Ohio State President Ted Carter to help with the Bitcoin magic trick. Carter being included was not mentioned in any of the draft speeches made available in the request, including the eighth and final version.
Pan's early drafts also wanted to focus on a message of peace as the war in Gaza raged on and protests sparked on college campuses including Ohio State.
The week Pan arrived on campus, those protests continued. Pan showed up to one protest to talk to people and attempted to give out bracelets to people from his company, MyIntent. Those were the same bracelets Pan told OSU graduates at commencement he would give to all of them, free of charge.
Pan initially wanted to use a metaphor about blindfolded people touching an elephant to talk about conflict resolution. He wanted to tell the crowd about meeting and getting to know Jewish and Palestinian people after Hamas' attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
"What I learned is that there is so much pain and trauma in both communities. Pain causes hate and violence. Hurt people hurt people," Pan said.
He then wanted to try and lead the crowd in a call-and-response using the Arabic word for peace "salam" and the Hebrew word for peace "shalom."
Records show that Pan received an email from Bechtold on April 24 at 5 a.m. requesting a Zoom meeting later that day. Bechtold said she was surprised by Pan's comments a few days before that he was not interested in giving a speech.
"Your messages are surprising, and we need to virtually meet quickly to discuss," Bechtold wrote.
Pan responded before the meeting that morning with two seemingly unrelated messages. One mentioned aid that the U.S. government had recently passed for several countries.
"We just passed $95 [billion in] aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. This is escalation - not de-escalation. We are a few tweets from a massive catastrophe if we don't wake people up," Pan said.
Pan also sent an image of a quote to Bechtold from dancer and musician Gabrielle Roth.
"The cure to our anxiety, depression, and divisiveness is so simple - we just need to do it - take action," Pan wrote.
Bechtold also admonished Pan for putting up a social media post on Instagram a few days after he had attended the protest on campus. A few days before, Bechtold had sent Pan the university's "space rules" to ensure he complied with the university's regulations during the protest.
"Please be sure those you are taking pictures with understand the intent of how you plan to use those photos. I know we have Buckeyes in our community that prefer not to be captured in photo or video for many different personal reasons," Bechtold wrote.
Pan responded that he deleted the post.
The emails also show Pan had to lobby Ohio State to allow him to give a longer speech. Bechtold and other officials told Pan they wanted him to give a "traditional" speech.
"For the ceremony, we would request a more traditional 10-minute speech focused on your journey, mental health, MyIntent, etc," Bechtold told Pan a month before the ceremony.
Ohio State University took eight months to fulfill WOSU's records request for emails between Pan and university officials.
OSU spokesman Ben Johnson said in an email OSU receives thousands of records requests annually, and the number of requests OSU receives has doubled in the last two years.
"We process requests as quickly as possible," Johnson said.
