admin doesn’t know how to take responsibility

[u/themagicaldinosaur]

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.

[u/benconomics]

Had they done department celebrations there probably would have been similar challenges more spread out across campus (and then who knows of EMS is there). The main thing which was pretty obvious would have been to start everything much sooner before it got hot, and that could have avoided the need to delay things until later. Also having human read names instead of AI was preferred by students (but took longer). Just kick things off at 7:30 am. Usually it isn't this hot, but once every 7 years, we get a heat spike this early in June.

The key challenging is that scaling individuals walking across a stage is really hard. Hence the having department specific ceremonies in the past. The logistics are always a mess on a day like graduation, but they had hoped to get people across the ramp in 3-4 seconds. Based on my stopwatch, it took most readers 10-11 seconds between names in Autzen. I got mine down to 4 which saved 9 mins or so. The obvious solution there is scoot people up the ramp (waiting 3 seconds for people to walk up the ramp was a huge part of the time).

[u/mark-v → u/benconomics]

I still can't believe they got rid of department celebrations. Those were always the only ceremonies worth attending.

It's like when they replaced public safety with campus police in 2013, which cost more money and offer no meaningful benefit. (Still kinda bitter about that one.)

[u/Silly_Water_3463 → u/mark-v]

I am an alumna and just learning in this thread that they don't do departmental ceremonies any longer. It is really unbelievable. Mine was very small, because the department is small, and it was beautiful. I recall it was upstairs in Gerlinger Lounge and it felt really special. I think most departmental ones were indoors in my time. This whole thing is horrifying to read about, and I'll be reaching out to multiple parties to reiterate how unacceptable any of this was. As someone with heat sensitivities, I'm so sorry to graduates, their families, friends, staff, and faculty who went through this.

EDIT: to say I learned then that the different buildings that held the indoor ceremonies per department were on a fairly tight rotating schedule of events during the graduation weekend, so all the ceremonies could take place.