I was surprised when I recently learned that at Whitman College the last senior graduation requirement is the act of graduation itself. Currently, walking at commencement is not a choice to celebrate one’s graduation but a requirement to complete that very graduation. I believe that commencement should be a voluntary activity and then removing this requirement would benefit both the students and the ceremony itself.
To be clear, I think Whitman students should participate in commencement, just that this participation should be voluntary. This is not just because commencement should primarily honor student achievement. Commencement is really a post-graduation event and so cannot be justified as a requirement in the same way other students requirements at Whitman are justified.
Whitman College requires a lot of its students and for good reason. Incoming students experience a bevy of workshops, lectures and group meetings during opening week. The experience is tiring and sometimes feels tedious, but it helps students successfully transition to college life.
This sort of oversight diminishes as students age, but students still meet with their adviser every semester. All these programs ensure that we succeed and eventually graduate.
The college and the students both benefit from these requirements. Students do better both academically and socially, graduate on time and have more career options after Whitman. The college benefits by advertising the success and four-year graduation rates of its students.
Commencement does not fit this model. Requiring students to walk at commencement cannot make them more successful in college: their undergraduate careers are already over.
Instead, requiring all students to graduate seems to primarily benefit the college. Commencement honors the individual achievements of students, but it also advertises the college’s aesthetic and academic achievements. Requiring students to attend shifts the importance from the students’ individual celebrations towards the success of the ceremony as a whole.
Of course, commencement does celebrate the achievements of both the college and its students. But if the ceremony were primarily a celebration of student success, would it be a graduation requirement? The requirement makes commencement seem more like an advertisement for the Whitman brand than it would if participation were optional.
Since commencement typically occurs after students have completed their degrees it is really more of an alumni obligation than a graduation requirement. Whitman relies on gifts from its alumni who traditionally give at a very high percentage. Alumni don’t give for their own benefit, they give to support their alma mater both monetarily and symbolically.
Walking at commencement should be more like this act of giving. Graduating seniors should be able to choose to support their school and their classmates. Commencement is the first commitment graduating seniors have to Whitman as alumni and it is one they should accept as a choice, not as a requirement.
One important reason for the school to require students to participate in commencement is the preservation of the ceremony itself. If few students attended commencement then the ceremony would certainly be a less memorable spectacle. And requiring students to stay in town until commencement helps maintain a sense of community among the graduating class.
These are laudable goals. But I think these goals would be even better served through voluntary student participation in commencement.
A voluntary commencement would ensure that graduating seniors really want to participate. If attendance is a problem then the school could make the commencement ceremony more attractive to the students and their parents. As a result, students could have a more involved role in designing and planning the capstone ceremony of their college career.
Students who are opposed to commencement could opt-out, which at present is not an option unless they show the Board of Review that they cannot attend. I do not know if many students would choose to skip the ceremony but they should have this option. If commencement was a choice they might also explain why and how their concerns could help improve the ceremony.
If commencement were voluntary, the college would also set up a better relationship with its graduating seniors. The relationship between alumni and Whitman is a voluntary one which assumes solidarity both between the alumni of each graduating class and between the alumni and the college. A voluntary commencement ceremony would accurately reflect this post-graduation relationship.
Instead, the mandatory commencement ceremony ignores the autonomy of graduating seniors.
