Instead of the storied walls of Pauley Pavilion, students will be surrounded by the walls of Drake Stadium as they walk for the main commencement ceremony of the College of Letters and Science.
The ceremony is expected to be displaced for three years while the renovation and expansion of Pauley Pavilion is completed, said Julie Sina, chief of staff for the College of Letters and Science. An updated commencement Web site with more details will be launched today.
As the main commencement speaker has fallen through for the past two years, the College is committed to involving more students in the commencement process, specifically by including students on the commencement committee to provide recommendations for possible speakers, Sina said.
As of press time, a main speaker for the College commencement ceremony has been contacted, but has not yet confirmed, she said.
Moving the College ceremony out of Pauley presented a number of obstacles related to cost and timing as various departmental commencement ceremonies that were previously held in the pavilion had to be taken into account as well, Sina said.
“With losing the indoor setting of Pauley, we had to worry about the logistics of scheduling the College ceremony and the departmental ceremonies because we don’t want our graduates and their families out in the heat,” Sina said.
After learning Pauley Pavilion would be unavailable for the next three years, a commencement committee composed of students, staff, faculty and alumni met during the summer and discussed the possibility of not having the main College commencement because of the higher setup, staging and staffing costs of Drake Stadium, Sina said.
“A question about moving the ceremony was initially raised in terms of cost, but it was quickly answered by students,” Sina said. “The committee gave us a couple of perspectives, and we got an idea of how important this ceremony was to students.”
The commencement committee surveyed 300 students over the summer about the commencement process in the last few years and the importance of the College commencement ceremony, and results showed that students overwhelmingly wanted to keep the main ceremony, said Cinthia Flores, president of the Undergraduate Students Associate Council.
“Commencement is really a celebration of (students’) time here and a recognition of their contribution to UCLA. It’s an experience that belongs to students and also to their families, and the ceremony provides an avenue for their families to truly appreciate all the hard work they’ve done,” Flores said.
The survey also showed that students wanted to be more directly involved in the planning of the ceremony, which has led to a more prominent role for USAC on the commencement committee. With the USAC internal vice president sitting on the committee, an undergraduate student is now involved in working with administrators to select the main speaker, a process that was not in place last year, Flores said.
The committee also hopes to engage students in the student speaker selection process through an aggressive publicity campaign, said Joseph Brown, graduate student affairs officer for the political science department.
“We’ll be using Facebook and listservs and getting in touch with all the department student affairs officers to get the word out,” Brown said. “This is the first time we’re really making a push to get students involved and outreach to the seniors because really, we want this to be a student event.”