No University of Virginia commencement speaker would have been able to avoid the Rolling Stone gang-rape debacle in their speech this year, but few could have addressed the controversy as humorously and eloquently as comedian Ed Helms.
Helms (“The Hangover,” “The Office”) ripped the magazine over its botched story of an alleged gang rape on campus that sent shockwaves around the world and suggested U.Va. was a school full of students more concerned with their own lives than helping a brutalized fellow student.
“It has been said that a rolling stone gathers no moss. I would add that sometimes a rolling stone also gathers no verifiable facts or even the tiniest morsels of journalistic integrity,” Helms told the graduating class.
Aside from the joke, Helms used his platform to discuss the very real setback victims of sexual assault may have faced due to the Rolling Stone story.
“Rolling Stone tried to define you this year,” Helms said. “As a result, not only was this community thrown deep into turmoil, but the incredibly important struggle to address sexual violence on campuses nationwide was suddenly more confusing than ever and needlessly set back.”
He added: “This community didn’t fall for the fallacy that just because Rolling Stone was wrong, everything here must be perfectly peachy. You all had the courage to understand you can be outraged at Rolling Stone and still ask yourselves hard questions: If sexual violence does occur in our community, do we have the best possible protocols and resources available to our students? And UVA is charging forward to answer those questions, and you should be proud of that.”
