Following weeks of pro-Palestine protests and unrest on campus, Columbia University has canceled its university-wide commencement ceremony scheduled for May 15, but will continue with smaller, school-wide celebrations.
In place of the university ceremony, the university said it will focus celebrations around pre-planned, smaller scale “Class Days” and school-wide ceremonies, “where students are honored individually alongside their peers.” Columbia claims that the decision was made in consultation with student leaders.
“Our students emphasized that these smaller-scale, school-based celebrations are most meaningful to them and their families,” the University said in a statement on May 6. “They are eager to cross the stage to applause and family pride and hear from their school’s invited guest speakers. As a result, we will focus our resources on those school ceremonies and on keeping them safe, respectful, and running smoothly.”
Online, in the hours after the announcement was made, many claimed that the University had not emailed the student body to inform them of the change.
“How am i hearing about this from phil before the university WHEN I GO HERE?????” one student in response to a post on Twitter by Phillip Lewis, Deputy Editor of Huffington Post, sharing the decision.
“Well…Twitter was a wild way to find this news,” said one law student.
“It’s been five hours and students have yet to receive any communication from Columbia about commencement.” said another Twitter user.
Mariam Jallow, a junior at Columbia College and the incoming president of the Columbia College Student Council, told TIME that the decision has eroded the student body’s trust in university administration. “A lot of the communications we got about taking down the encampment and the police raid into Hamilton Hall was all done under the excuse of the senior class and that [they] didn’t have a high school graduation due to COVID,” says Jallow. “Now a lot of seniors, and those in the classes below feel like they were being lied to because the university commencement is not happening and the Class Days are happening on our football stadium. For a lot of students, the trust that was hardly there throughout all of this has now been totally destroyed.”
Columbia University’s media relations team did not reply to TIME’s request for comment ahead of publication.
Many of the ceremonies that were scheduled to take place on the Morningside campus’s South Lawn—where protesters set up encampments on April 17 in protest of the war in Gaza and the university’s investment ties to Israel— are being relocated to Baker Athletics Complex, the University’s outdoor sports venue located 5.4 miles away from the main campus (at the very tip of Inwood in Manhattan). The university-wide commencement was also meant to take place on the Morningside campus.
The university has been at the center of international attention in the wake of the protests and the response from Columbia’s administration and police. On the evening of April 30, the New York Police Department (NYPD) arrived on campus to clear the encampments and remove pro-Palestinian protesters who had occupied Hamilton Hall, an administrative building on the Morningside campus, the evening prior. It was the second time that month that Columbia University called upon the NYPD to arrest pro-Palestinian protesters.
The University’s president, Minouche Shafik, requested last week that the NYPD remain on campus through at least May 17 “to maintain order and ensure encampments are not reestablished,” according to a letter Shafik wrote to the department.
In canceling commencement, Columbia follows the University of Southern California (USC) which also moved to cancel its university-wide ceremony following outcry over the cancellation of Muslim student Asna Tabassum’s valedictorian speech. (USC later said it canceled the ceremony due to “substantial risks relating to security and disruption.”)
“These past few weeks have been incredibly difficult for our community. Just as we are focused on making our graduation experience truly special, we continue to solicit student feedback and are looking at the possibility of a festive event on May 15 to take the place of the large, formal ceremony,” the university shared in its statement. “We will share more in the coming days.”