The Inevitable Happens

You may have seen the front-page article concerning seniors graduating from various universities including UCLA who will not have an in-person graduation ceremony. The photo at left comes from that article.

Back last March, Chancellor Block indicated that there would not be an in-person graduation ceremony and instead there would be some kind of online substitute. There was an outcry and he quickly apologized.* But here we are and there will be no in-person graduation in June.

In retrospect, the controversy seems to be the least of our problems when compared with a) the switch to online education in the spring (and now summer), b) uncertain planning for the fall quarter, and c) the outlook for the UC budget.

The inability to have a traditional June graduation seems inevitable, even from the mid-March point of view. However, the lack of a June graduation does matter to those seniors affected. From the LA Times' article:

...Christine Tran, a UCLA senior, was looking forward to graduation and certain traditions associated with it — perhaps most significant, dipping her hand in the inverted fountain, a campus landmark. UCLA students are initiated at the fountain their freshman year and told not to touch it again before graduation, lest it add an extra quarter to their undergraduate careers. But she also wanted to show her parents what she has accomplished and to let them know their sacrifices have mattered.

“Seeing thousands of other students,” Tran said, “ would signal something to them that this is a really big thing my daughter did, to graduate from here.”

Her parents, who emigrated from Vietnam after the war, had been working as a carpenter and a seamstress in El Monte. Both of them lost their jobs after the pandemic started and the economy tanked. Now Tran, who works as a law clerk at UCLA, is the only income earner in her family of five. She had to double her weekly hours, from 10 to 20, and cut short work on her honors thesis about cultural perceptions around domestic violence.

Recently, Tran was offered a Fulbright fellowship to teach in Vietnam — a dream job — but now she’s waiting to hear from a U.S.-based fellowship that would keep her closer to home. “Even if I do get these post-grad opportunities I’ve been dreaming of, maybe I can’t take them because I need to support my family first and it would feel selfish to just leave,” she said...

Full story at https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-05-09/coronavirus-class-of-2020-seniors-lost-rituals
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*https://chancellor.ucla.edu/messages/making-commencement-decisions-together/; https://dailybruin.com/2020/03/19/ucla-reconsiders-virtual-commencement-block-offers-apology/; https://dailybruin.com/2020/03/18/ucla-moves-spring-graduation-ceremonies-online-to-curb-spread-of-covid-19/
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There is always this option: