The pro-Palestinian protests that have rocked college campuses in New York and across the country have left university administrators scrambling to potentially reshape their plans for upcoming graduation ceremonies — and hoping to avoid the need to cancel them altogether.
The unrest comes at a time when many graduating seniors already saw their high school commencement ceremonies either minimized or postponed four years ago when the COVID-19 pandemic stunted school activities. But so far, no New York universities have canceled their in-person ceremonies. That includes Columbia, the site of the original protest encampment, whose president said Monday that the school is “trying to make plans that we will indeed hold a Commencement.”
That’s in contrast to the University of Southern California, which canceled its main graduation ceremony that had been scheduled for next week.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, meanwhile, is making it clear she wants to keep it that way.
Speaking to reporters in Manhattan on Tuesday, Hochul noted many graduating seniors were robbed of their high school commencement four years ago by the pandemic.
“It is my expectation that every college and university in New York will celebrate commencement safely in person,” she wrote in a letter to every campus president in the state on Monday.
At Columbia’s Morningside Heights campus, students and faculty had mixed feelings about the future of the university’s commencement, currently scheduled for May 15.
Tejasri Vijayakumar, a senior who is student body president of Columbia College, said “a lot of students do want their parents to see them cross the stage and receive a diploma.”
“I know other students who are like, ‘I don’t care that much about a ceremony if it excludes my friends who have been arrested or suspended — or, like, if it’s from a university I don’t feel particularly proud of at the moment,’” she said.
In her statement Monday, Columbia President Minouche Shafik cited the…
Read the full article here
Leave a Reply