Lame Arts & Sciences Graduation Ceremony to Be Repeated in 2007

Back in May 2005, we posted about how Marquette’s College of Arts & Sciences had substituted a new-style graduation ceremony for the traditional one.

Our bottom line: lame. Really, really lame.

The traditional graduation ceremony didn’t take all afternoon, didn’t require everybody to listen to turgid speeches, didn’t require everybody to sit around while each and every Arts & Science graduate walked across a stage, and maximized faculty-student interaction.

The Arts & Sciences College repeated the fiasco in 2006, and will repeat it in 2007.

We talked to Sue Farrell in the Arts College, and she confirmed to us that “feedback from the faculty came back the way you said” (that is, highly negative).

But Ferrell insisted that student and parent feedback was much more positive. She said that they seemed to like the “pomp and circumstance.” Ferrell said that no systematic data has been collected, and that the college has gotten only “informal feedback.”

One of our former students wrote to us last year saying:

. . . I would like to know where I can find these parents who lobby for a second, never-ending ceremony [in addition to the one on Sunday morning], because I think my parents would like to smack some sense into these people.

Ferrell admits that the “meet and greet” after the ceremony needs to be “more effective.” In 2005, we could not even find the supposed “meet and greet.” In the traditional ceremony, one could not avoid meeting and greeting students and parents, which was splendid.

We frankly think the Arts College should gather some systematic data on this, rather than relying on a few (likely unrepresentative) people who happen to talk to Dean Michael McKenny.