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Pres Phillips plans to hold graduation at football stadium, ban “rogue” department ceremonies

That’s the word from multiple sources at the department head Zoom meeting. Apparently the plan is to blame this on UESS and staff, but we all know the real reason is that our administrative overlords can’t stand the fact that our students want to take their parents to department ceremonies where they can meet their friends and teachers, instead of some Duck Crap thing where you listen to the President and Provost bloviate from the Autzen big screen.

You can bet the Senate will be taking this up, as what could be more of an “academic matter as commonly understood” than graduation.

11 Comments

  1. honest Uncle Gangsta 11/10/2022

    UESS — the apparatus for “undergraduate education and student success” — their materials sound even stranger than their name — are they responsible for the advising disaster — the pressure for grade inflation — the constant interjections into the beginning classes — the multitudes of unqualified students mired in student debt? Or likely, part of a grander infernal scheme?

    The centralization of graduation would be in line with their other tendencies.

    • Just another OA 11/15/2022

      This blog has turned into an uninformed gossip mill. UESS doesn’t even oversee commencement nor does it have any role in its coordination.

  2. Mike 11/10/2022

    Are you not entertained?

  3. Pissed Programmer 11/10/2022

    Soon there will be GSS, Graduation Shared Services. Because everyone wins with ‘Big Box’ stores :/

    • Anonymous 11/10/2022

      This has nothing to do with CAS Shared Services. At. All. If short on staff, it would be the facilities, catering that are short on staff. They’re scapegoating. They are saving $$$. Less $ spent by departments for graduation, means less money going to departments, means less money going to the college, means more money for administrative bloat! If there’s a problem, loo

  4. anon and on and on 11/10/2022

    I get that staffing and services are in steep shortage, but the ‘no rogue graduations’ thing seems counterproductive to the point of simple meanness. It will be a PR disaster with every single stakeholder. Can’t have big productions with food and on-site receptions? Fine. We had to scale them back a lot last year too, and do more to plan as faculty, but we still had them.

    But forbidding units’ ceremonies if we are willing to plan them? And what if we have enough staff and money to do it? (Perhaps they want to sweep that money to buy new door nameplates for all the Interims.) I assume they still have not committed anything to writing, so maybe they’ll back off once they know this will be yet another foot-shootin’ clunker from our Temporary Overlords.

    (Will they do this for the Honors College too, and further wreck that, or maybe offer faculty-in-replacement applicants an additional course release or two if they’ll help plan one?)

  5. just different 11/10/2022

    Seriously, what’s the reasoning behind this? Doesn’t everyone hate huge graduations? Even if it does somehow “save the university money,” isn’t graduation the one thing students (or their parents) are happy to spend money on?

    • CSN 11/11/2022

      How much are students and parents thinking about graduation when they are making their initial enrollment decision? I bet it doesn’t play into their thought process much at all.

      • just different 11/15/2022

        Well, it might play into their thought process about whether to attend graduation and make alumni donations later on. In any event, does the University really make the calculation that it’s good business to screw people as long as it’s a few millimeters shy of the point where they decide to go somewhere else?

  6. UO believer 11/14/2022

    Agreed. This seems like it’s the instinct to centralize at its worst. Departments that actually do manage to build any sense of camaraderie will be undercut by the corporate graduation model.

    • Fishwrapper 11/15/2022

      Camaraderie? One of the best parts about OSU’s “corporate graduation model” is hearing the tiny contingent of College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences grads band together vocally to out-shout the larger – though still small compared to the other colleges – contingent of Forestry grads.

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