College graduation; it’s one of the proudest times of your life. After years of hard work, you’ve finally completed your well-earned degree and now it’s time to get your deserved moment in the spotlight.
You’re wearing a hat with a tassel on it, just because you can, and robes that make you feel like you’re about to attend Charms class with Professor Flitwick. And, of course, the best part comes when your name is read aloud in front of a crowd full of your family, friends, and peers. To paraphrase Rebecca Black, this is your moment.
So imagine the crushing disappointment that must’ve been felt by the 2024 graduating class of Thomas Jefferson University when their big moment was ruined by an announcer managing to mangle every single one of their names.
This is one of those viral TikTok stories that really needs to be seen to be believed. In the marble-filled mouth of the woman on announcing duties at this year’s commencement ceremony, names such as “Maeve Elizabeth” and “Sarah Virginia Brennan” became “Mayveelee Zubeth” and “Sayer OhvoonJeen Breenarn.” Best of all, she inexplicably transforms the name “Thomas” into “Tahmoomay”… despite literally working for Thomas Jefferson University!
After Colleen’s TikTok went viral, wracking up 1.4. million likes, another recording of the same ceremony offered some vital context for how on Earth this woman managed to mess up her one job so badly. Although, honestly, it doesn’t explain everything. After murdering countless names, the woman apologizes to the crowd for the “phonetic spellings,” so clearly she was reading from a list of names spelled phonetically — and it’s now abundantly clear to us all she has no idea how to read phonetic spellings.
As funny as the woman’s attempts to outdo John Travolta’s Adele Kazeem moment are, let’s not sleep on the hilarious reactions from the students. As our old friend Cody Jacob pointed out, Sarah Virginia Brennon deserves a comedy award for her “Umm excuse me?” reaction to her name’s iconic mispronunciation while Thomas Michael Canevari Jr. is now everyone’s hero for actually correcting Miss TJU on getting his name wrong. Brilliantly, the one and only Tahmoomay made an appearance in the comments of this video, declaring: “I’M THE THOMAS.”
From what we can gather, this woman was removed from her role after 30 minutes (30 minutes!) as she was doing such an atrocious job, so hopefully the majority of the ceremony went more smoothly. Underneath the hilarity, though, it’s worth pointing out that, as this is the college graduation class of 2024, these students would’ve graduated high school in 2020, a year when commencement ceremonies like this were cancelled due to the pandemic. This means that this could’ve been their only time to experience a key life moment like this one, all ruined by Travolta’s long-lost sister.
On the other hand, those with rarer names, at least rarer in the U.S., are feeling pretty vindicated by this turn of events. “As a brown girl, this heals me,” one commenter wrote. “The amount of Jessica’s that have pronounced my name wrong.”
One upside? At least these students will never forget their graduation from Tahmoomay Jefferson University.