Updates on 2020-21 Graduation Ceremony

Christon Arthur, PhD
Provost of Andrews University

How has the process been trying to plan a graduation ceremony in such an ever-changing environment?

The process has involved looking at the recommendations from the state of Michigan and the CDC. Our mitigation efforts are working. Even though we're in a pandemic, we want to give students every opportunity to celebrate their accomplishments. It's a matter of trying to balance the quality of things: to give students a chance to celebrate their achievements, they must have moments of celebration, even if it is only for their mental health, but also to feel good about their accomplishments. We are also in an environment where we want to keep the state’s guidelines and those of the CDC foremost in our minds.

Before we decided, I had conversations with the Graduate Student Association president, the Undergraduate Student Association, and the president of the graduating class. We've collected a list of graduating seniors and graduate students. In the next week or two, look out for a town hall meeting with our students to share our plans and to gather input.

What specifically spurred the decision to hold the graduation in person instead of the option that Andrews implemented last year when the pandemic initially hit?

Good question. Last year in March, right around spring break, all of our students, for the most part, went home and were remote. There were some exceptions, notably with international students and some other students that made the case that campus would be a safer environment for them, but the majority returned home. Having sent our students home and having remote learning for the rest of the spring semester, we thought it was unwise and not feasible to bring them back for graduation. There were no students on campus, and the virtual ceremony made sense because they were already scattered throughout the United States.

This spring, our students are here. We brought them back. We have classes in person. In some cases, this decision leads to difficult conversations with the plans to come back to campus because everything is still not 100%. Amid the pandemic, having decided to host in-person classes, we tested our students. We had a week or so before the first classes started. We felt pretty safe that based on the tests that we did and the week or so of a quasi-quarantine, it was okay to begin face-to-face classes. Because our students are here with us, we thought that using the protocols that we have established for the classroom environment, we could celebrate graduation with students already here.

How different will this graduation ceremony and the festivities afterward be compared to years past, and will these changes be standard going forward?

Some things will be unique to this year, but there are also some things that we do now that may become part of the future. Usually, for our typical graduation ceremonies in the past, PMC would be crowded for graduation. We would give students up to six or seven tickets per graduate to invite family members and friends, and we'd have those persons sitting shoulder to shoulder within PMC. But in this environment of physical distancing, that's not going to happen. Also, we have decided that it might be unwise and unsafe to open the campus for graduation. So faculty members and graduating students are the only ones who are physically in the graduation space.

The reason that we decided not to open up graduation to family members, friends, and loved ones at this point is really because of logistics. We would have to figure out how to ensure that those persons have been tested when they come to the Berrien Springs area, and they would need an appropriate time to quarantine. But there's no way I could monitor whether another person quarantined when they arrived. There is no way we could have a central screening location to make sure every person had a negative test. The logistics of that are just too much.

We anticipate that in future years this restriction on the graduation ceremony will not be in place. We’ll go back to the days when family members and friends could be part of the graduation. So, we're planning that for Spring 2022, any student who graduated during the pandemic: Spring of 2020, Summer of 2020, Fall of 2020, Spring of 2021, possibly even Summer of 2021, when we had limited and restricted celebration moments, can come back for this May 2022 graduation. They can walk if they want to; they can bring their friends if they’re going to; and they'll have a chance to celebrate, because we know that even if we had a virtual ceremony, and now a face to face ceremony for this May, we couldn't have celebrated the way we wanted to. So our plan is for any student who graduated during this time period to come back and be part of a grander celebration in 2022.

There are some aspects of this year’s graduation that we may take into the future. We have some students who cannot come to campus to be part of the physical celebration, and what we’re planning to do is have a hybrid graduation. Those who are here in Berrien Springs will be there in person, and those who cannot be here in Berrien Springs for the ceremony could attend virtually. What we'll do is put a picture of the graduate on the screen, announce their degrees, and maybe have some commendations about this person who is graduating virtually. It’ll be a way to showcase those students and still acknowledge them in the graduation, even if they're not here. Possibly, moving forward, we'll always have a virtual moment in our graduation ceremony to celebrate the accomplishments of those who couldn't be there physically. It might be a lesson from COVID that we’ll take with us: to celebrate students’ accomplishments who cannot be physically in the ceremony, but to still acknowledge them in our celebrations. Right now, the pre-COVID procedure would have it that those persons would have been listed in the program but never mentioned in a graduation ceremony.

Are there any preparations for December Graduates and Remote Students to walk and receive their degrees here at AU?

This spring, we will include December and remote students, but that inclusion will most likely be in a virtual setting because we want to limit face-to-face interactions to persons who are cleared to be on campus. Some students who were cleared to be here will have to leave near the end of February or sometime in March to go through clinical placements, but if they’re graduating, they will be allowed to return to campus. These are students who chose to come to be with us face-to-face, and them leaving to go to clinicals is not an individual choice but a program requirement. We felt, “why limit the public participation when the choice was not theirs totally?” So, when they're finished with their clinicals, they'll come back and go through the process of being tested again. We’ll wait for the test results, and then they will be able to re-join us as part of the campus community.

What is the rationale for preventing parents from attending graduation but allowing parents to help students move out for the semester?

At the beginning of the year, when parents came with their children to move them into the residence halls, they arrived, made sure their children were settled safely at the residence halls, and then left. Those parents were never integrated into the campus. We are planning for the same thing to happen at the end of the semester: the parents will come, their children will check out of other rooms in the residence halls, they will transport them back home, and they will never be integrated into the campus. We see graduation as a full ceremony that they would be a part of, which could last for a few hours. It is more than merely coming to check in and out and leave. It's no different as to why we did not have the typical parent convocation at the beginning of Fall Semester: to us, that is integration into the campus, and the fact that we couldn't have every parent tested, and we couldn't have every parent go into quarantine as it did for our students, presents a risk.

Our students were tested a week before face-to-face classes started; we can’t create that same buffer period for parents in order to have them integrated into campus life. That is what led to the decision of saying: “only the persons who are currently integrated into campus will be part of the ceremony.” Now, this is difficult. I understand the need for parents to celebrate, but we have to balance that with the health risk to the campus.

Graduation usually takes place over three days, so we took this into account when considering the number of events and the length of the service. The usual mitigation practice is six feet of distance between persons unless you're part of a cohort in a classroom setting. However, even if you're wearing a mask, and even if you have six feet of distance, both the Berrien County Health Department and the CDC suggest that you should take action regarding others present in the room when the exposure is prolonged. Think about what would happen if we had two parents per graduate: we're talking about potentially a couple thousand persons on campus. Let's suppose they remained six feet apart, but were in a ceremony for three hours. If there were one or two persons within that setting who had the virus, the level of contact tracing we would have to do would be very challenging. Could we have pulled it off? I guess theoretically, yes. But trying to make sure that every person is safe in a setting like that was a bit of a challenge. The risk of what could happen is too high for me to be comfortable with it.

Is there anything else that you would like the student body to know?

I want the student body to know that we'll set up a meeting in the next week or two to talk with any person who has planned for graduation, especially those who are worried about the virtual part of the ceremony and those who want to include friends and parents in their celebration. I'm also willing to have a town hall with parents to talk about that. But I think it's helpful for students and parents to know the thought process behind our decision: it was not just “oh well, it’s an easier decision for me.” We're weighing all the different things that have happened.

We're always reviewing our safety protocols, making sure that they're practical, current, and up-to-date with the guidelines of the CDC. Dr. Anthony Fauci, who I trust in this area, stated that it would not be until July before enough people have access to the vaccines that we’ll reach herd immunity for the country. If the assessment were that we could have people vaccinated by April and attain herd immunity, there would have been a different decision about graduation. The fact that vaccination efficacy and vaccination availability will not have a large enough effect until July informed our decision regarding May graduation.

We will keep monitoring it, and if conditions change, we will adjust. Whether they're graduating or not, any student who has questions about why we behave in particular ways can talk with AUSA or AUGSA. We'll talk about our position; we are open, we are available, and we are always willing to talk. We'll speak with small groups, one on one, and large groups. We will listen. We've been listening to AUSA leadership and AUGSA leadership as we tried to make our decision, and they have been very helpful and have given ideas. So we're open to the ideas and suggestions from students.