Three women will deliver the student orations at this year’s Commencement exercises for the first time in recent memory.

Alicia Menendez ’05 will deliver the English oration, Caitlin C. Gillespie ’05 will present the Latin oration, and Dorinda J. Carter, a doctoral student at the Graduate School of Education (GSE), will be the graduate school orator.

Though this comes in the midst of intense discussion on Harvard’s campus about the role of women in academia, Richard J. Tarrant, chair of the committee which selects the speakers, said the only thing considered when choosing the orators from a competitive pool of 50 applicants was the quality of the speeches.

The three orators were selected by an eight-person committee of faculty members and administrators last week.

“We evaluate the speeches as to how we think they will sound to the Commencement audience,” Tarrant said. “We hope for a kind of mix.”

Menendez pointed out that not only are the three orators all female, but two of them identify themselves as minorities.

Menendez said her speech will deal with how her perception of Harvard has changed since she was admitted.

“My experience is that Harvard isn’t perfect and Harvard students aren’t perfect and yet there are so many glimmers of perfection,” Menendez said.

Gillespie said that during recent years, the Latin speech has been lighter than its English counterparts.

While the Latin oration is one of Harvard’s older traditions—dating back to 1642—Gillespie said that her oration will create a very timely metaphor. She plans to compare her experience at Harvard to a game of baseball.

“We’re all graduating within the year that’s best for Boston and graduating is almost comparable to a victory in the world series,” Gillespie said.

Translations of the Latin address will be distributed at Commencement.

Carter said her speech, which draws upon her experience as an African-American woman, is a call to action for graduates.

Carter is the first orator from the GSE in recent memory, and some GSE faculty believe she may be the first graduate school orator ever selected from the GSE.

“There have been whispers in the air that the graduate speaker is never a [GSE] person,” Carter said. “I figured why not try for it.”