OUR VIEWS Consensus Opinion

Cinco de Mayo gave 2,200 Tech students a reason to celebrate this year as they finished their degrees at Tech, received their commemorative picture (diplomas to be mailed in 6-8 weeks) and shook President Clough's hand as they walked across the stage in the commencement ceremony at the Georgia Dome.

This year's speaker, CEO of General Electric Jeffrey Immelt, was the highlight of the morning. Mr. Immelt not only spoke without being employed by the Board of Regents (as was the case with the illustrious speaker at UGA, the current Chancellor of the Board of Regents), but was humorous, knew some Tech traditions and kept his speech under 15 minutes.

The ceremony was impressively coordinated, as both the graduates and spectators found their respective seats without practice or confusion. The ceremony, although well-done, was not flawless, running over three hours in length. While it is understandable that reading off 2,200 names would take a great amount of time, the administration should investigate options to make a good ceremony great.

By holding a single ceremony that encompasses the entire spring graduating class with the exception of Ph.D. students, Tech presents a sense of unity that should not be undervalued. Unfortunately, this single-service graduation can become burdensomely long, with many master's graduates leaving shortly after their degrees were conferred. It might be worthwhile to consider placing all graduate students in one ceremony, instead of a separate Ph.D.-only graduation.

Another idea is to divide spring graduation into more segments by splitting some of the colleges, as is done with summer and winter. While this would drastically shorten the number of names called out, it presents more logistical problems than it might be worth. It takes a crowd to draw a good speaker, and several smaller ceremonies would not have the numbers needed to secure the type of speaker that Tech graduates deserve. Also, our school is already divided along college lines. Graduation is a time to remind us of what we all have in common: a Tech diploma; it is not to reinforce the differences and give students the chance to complain that they got shafted by having an "inferior" graduation speaker.

Instead, Tech could focus on personalizing the graduation experience. Some schools already have programs and private ceremonies to honor their top graduates. If all schools individually recognized students, Tech would be able to speed through the full ceremony, recognizing graduates by major, school or college, and the overall graduation experience would gain the personal touch it is currently lacking.