In total, 383 people voted for commencement speaker and each one of them voted for Ed O’Neil in their top five list.
Despite receiving the most votes from Ohio University students, actor Ed O’Neil will not be the person delivering the undergraduate commencement speech April 30.
Instead, Bill Brand will be the 2016 commencement speaker. He came in eighth place in the student votes, according to information obtained by a public records request.
It was not immediately clear as of press time if Brand was the first or the only person the university contacted to be the graduation speaker.
Brand is the president of the cable channel HSN and the chief marketing officer of HSN, Inc. He graduated from OU's School of Media Arts and Studies with a bachelor's degree in 1987.
For the first time, OU students had a chance to help vote for the Spring Commencement speaker from a list of 16 nominees by voting for their top five choices on the list in late January. In February, a list of the top eight potential speakers was sent to OU's Office of the President for consideration, according to a previous Post report. Brand came in eighth place in the voting and just made the cut of names submitted to the Office of the President.
In total, 383 people voted and each one of them voted for O’Neil as one of their top five votes, Jenny Hall-Jones, interim vice president of Student Affairs and dean of students, said. O'Neil played father figure Al Bundy on Married with Children, and plays paternal figure Jay Pritchett on ABC’s sitcom Modern Family.
Actress Piper Perabo received the second-highest number of votes with 297, journalist Allie LaForce received 189 votes and former Philadelphia Phillies baseball player Mike Schmidt received 172 votes. Brand received 99 votes.
Allison Holt, a senior studying marketing, said she would have liked it if the university took students' votes more into consideration.
"It would've been nice for them to give the seniors what they wanted,” Holt said, adding that she didn’t know there was a vote for commencement speaker.
Rachel Niese, a senior studying international business and management, said she liked the choice for commencement speaker.
"I think his credibility ... is much higher than some of the other people,” Niese said.
She questions, however, why a vote was held for a commencement speaker if the university didn't intend to choose the person who received the most votes.
“I just don't understand why they had a vote if they were going to pick someone different," Niese said.
The undergraduate ceremonies will take place on April 30 at 9:30 a.m. and 2 p.m. at the Convocation Center.
—Jonny Palmero contributed to this report
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