With all the empty chairs, it looked a little bit like week four of Introto International Relations.
But on Friday at Ryan Field, it was the professors who played hooky.
Despite encouragement from administrators, only about 60 Northwesternfaculty members participated in the commencement ceremonies.
“There’s no doubt there weren’t a lot of faculty at the commencement,” saidAlan Cubbage, vice president for university relations. “There never are.”
And that’s irked some administrators. Cubbage said faculty membersgenerally prefer the individual school convocations to the universitywideceremony.
“The question becomes, how do we encourage them to come to bothceremonies?” he said. “It’s an issue that’s unresolved, to be honest.”
A possible solution would be mandatory attendance, but administratorsaren’t prepared to crack the whip just yet, Cubbage said.
He said administrators also have considered holding just commencementceremonies and no convocations. But that would make it nearly impossiblefor graduates to walk across the stage – and parents would lose a classicphoto opportunity.
“We would have a lot of angry students and parents,” Cubbage said “Thereare obviously advantages and disadvantages to this somewhat bifurcatedsystem.”
Some professors said they attend the Saturday morning convocations becausethey are smaller and provide a chance to see individual students graduate.Most departments require professors to attend convocations on a rotatingbasis, such as every five years.
English Prof. Lawrence Lipking, who attended only the convocation thisyear, said he goes to the convocation at least as often as his departmentasks him to. But he said he rarely goes to the commencement ceremony.
“I’ve been to many commencements,” he said. “It loses its freshness whenyou’ve been to so many.”
He said that although the ceremony is meaningful to participants, it canget old year after year.
“It is a mostly long and boring event,” he said. “It isn’t for parents orstudents – I remember my own commencement. But there is a point at whichthe charm of the event fades.”
But some professors disagreed. Medill Prof. Jon Ziomek said he never missesthe small ceremony and often attends commencement as well.
“It’s kind of fun,” he said. “It’s afeel-good-about-your-place-of-employment kind of evening.”
