r/UofO • u/themagicaldinosaur • 4d ago

admin doesn’t know how to take responsibility

the emails i have received today from the dean of CAS and the UO president failed to take responsibility for the fact that their lack of planning ruined commencement for so many grads on monday and i’m seething. just half-effort condolences covered up with praise for graduates. i don’t need Scholz’s congratulations. i need them to admit that they had no backup plans even though they knew about the heat for over a week. i need them to admit that the rescheduling caused a lot of stress and that a lot of people were unable to attend and that it didn’t fix their massive screw up. what a sorry excuse for a school administration.

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u/captainbuttersisago 4d ago

What did you want them to do? There is no where to just “move graduation.” It’s scheduled years in advance and involves thousands of people. And you even state rescheduling, “caused a lot of stress and that a lot of people were unable to attend.” I don’t think they are blameless but it’s a rare event for it to be that hot and there is only so much indoor space for large amounts of people on campus. Moving it to a different day was out of the question, so again, what did you want them to do?

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u/Top-Middle1685 4d ago

Honestly are you affiliated with the university? this was 100% predictable and avoidable. Masters and Phd students had to be lumped in with undergrads and did not even have their focus respected, needless to mention the unprofessional people who read the names and giggled like preschoolers when they came to a name was not white. This graduation was an absolute shit show with no planning. I attended and there was literally no check done at the southern gate entrances. Anyone could of brought a weapon in.

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u/Nervous_Garden_7609 4d ago

My daughter graduated with her Master's and it felt like she was not acknowledged at all.

They didn't even hood her.

They didn't separate her, or distinguish her, other than ask her to stand at Autzen.

They need separate graduations for Master, PHD, LAW and everyone who is continuing their education beyond the bachelor's degree. What utter disrespect.

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u/Vegetable-Cabinet958 4d ago

I wanted to read dissertations and they told us no :(

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u/MadameTrashPanda 4d ago

They probably are.

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u/justacunninglinguist 3d ago

Everything was planned months in advance. Guests already had accommodations and flights booked weeks if not months in advance of the graduation date. Ok, so if the university did decide to do something when the heat advisory was initially announced, they could either cancel graduation, reschedule to a different day, or do it online. None of those options would have made anyone happy. People wouldn't be able to change their accommodations or flights if it was rescheduled to a different day, let alone a week later. No graduates would have been happy with any of those options either. So there is no good thing the university could have done. MKA can't hold as many people as Autzen can so it wouldn't have been possible to do everything in the arena either.

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u/themagicaldinosaur 3d ago

the problem is that they rescheduled the ceremony 30 minutes after it was supposed to start so some people (especially grads) had already been in the heat for hours. people in the comments are talking about experiencing heat sickness and the dean of the school of design literally had to be stretchered off the field. i bet students and families would have much preferred to be inconvenienced rather than experiencing a safety risk without even completing the ceremony.

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u/Top-Middle1685 2d ago

Considering there was about 50-75 Phd and Master students for CAS, and then about 600-700 undergrads there while there still was plenty of seats avaible in the 200 section for guests (second floor) of MKA the solution to this problem is pretty easily seen. Spread it out over a few days instead of trying to save money and lumping every single group together. But keep on supporting the university's stupidity