Both a track meet and a senior year of college are a strenuous race to the finish line – and next year the finish for University seniors could conflict with the finish for the University track team.
In spring 2010, seniors will graduate during Dead Week to accommodate the NCAA track and field national championship.
The University will host the track finals June 9-12; graduation was scheduled for the same weekend. University Provost Jim Bean and the President’s Small Executive Staff made the decision to move graduation back to June 3-5. Final exam are scheduled June 7-11, according to an e-mail sent on Bean’s behalf to University faculty.
The new commencement schedule means 2010 seniors will walk in their ceremonies on a Thursday, Friday or Saturday and then begin to take their finals the following Monday.
“This is not ideal, but the preponderance of feeling was that it was the better solution,” Bean said in the e-mail.
Paul van Donkelaar, University Senate president, said the decision “was never debated in the Senate. The provost came and made the announcement and there was some discussion.”
The group that made the decision considered various alternatives, van Donkelaar said, including moving graduation to fall after the track event, and holding the two as originally scheduled. There were pros and cons to all options, he said, but “this is the one that made the most sense.”
Bean said he and others had explored the idea of extending either winter or spring break during the 2009-10 school year, but that was not possible because it would have pushed the end of school past the end date in faculty contracts. They toyed with cutting a week of school, but Bean said he thought losing so many classes would reflect poorly on the University.
Bean said they had also considered keeping the two events as scheduled, which would not have been an excessive inconvenience. However, “one salient issue we could never get rid of was the number of hotel rooms in the city,” he said. The idea of parents not attending graduation for lack of accommodation seemed wrong, so this option was ruled out, Bean said.
Brad Foley, dean of the School of Music and Dance, said the change worked best for his school. If graduation had happened after the track finals, the school of music would have had almost no time to prepare for the annual Oregon Bach Festival.
Of having an early graduation, Foley said, “It’s not a perfect solution, but I think it’s workable.”
Holding commencement before finals will not be as drastic of a change as it sounds, according to the University registrar’s office. Tina Hammock, graduation specialist, said seniors walk before their finals are graded, anyway. Commencement usually takes place at the end of finals week, she said, and the registrar’s office doesn’t finish entering grades until a week or two later.
University spokesperson Phil Weiler agreed with Hammock. Weiler said students never receive an actual diploma in the graduation ceremony because it usually takes place the day after finals, when spring term grades are not yet submitted.
Graduation during Dead Week poses a problem. This is a stressful week for many students because professors often schedule final projects and papers for Dead Week instead of finals week. Bean said he plans to discuss the issue with University deans before spring term 2010.
University administrators have known the University will host the track finals since 2006, when it submitted its bid to the NCAA to hold the event, said NCAA spokesperson Mark Bedics.
Bedics said the University should have known of the scheduling conflict when it put in the hosting bid because universities are supposed to consider such issues when they put bids together.
Some faculty members said decisions like this one reflect poorly on the University.
“When the University decides to prioritize athletics over academics, the University’s reputation as an academic institution suffers,” biology professor Nathan Tublitz said.
In a commentary for the Jan. 4 edition of The Register-Guard, Tublitz wrote that the scheduling change “might have been excusable were it not the latest in a long line of similar decisions.”
Foley agreed, despite his support for the administration’s solution to the conflict. “I think it’s unfortunate that we have to modify our traditional calendar to accommodate an athletic event,” he said.
Physics professor Jim Remington said the poor scheduling is “symbolic of a real decline at this University in favor of the sports entertainment industry,” and that he “certainly disapproves.”
Many students share these opinions. Upon hearing that graduation will happen before finals, juniors Austin Loranger and Kylan Taylor guffawed. While Loranger laughed, Taylor said, “That’s funny … but I wouldn’t like it.”
“It does seem like they put a lot more emphasis on athletics here,” Taylor said.
Loranger added, “‘Student’ does come first in ‘student-athlete.’” However, he said he could see how the University would need to accommodate other schools that are on semester schedules and pointed out that the event will bring in revenue to the community.
Freshmen Darby Rousseau and Tara Peithman said they would be upset if they had to graduate before taking finals, and both said it seemed like the University was prioritizing track over academics.
“It would make you less inclined to study,” Rousseau said.
Bean said he recognized the conflict between academics and athletics, but moving graduation was simply a response to a prior scheduling problem and did not reflect the University’s priorities either way. The decision to hold the track finals was made before Bean became provost in July 2008 and was a situation that simply needed to be dealt with, he said.
In regards to the seeming dichotomy between athletics and academics at the University, Bean said he thinks it is a misconception that the athletic department pushes its agenda on the University. In actuality, Bean said, the athletic department is usually very concerned with these issues.
“My feeling is,” he said, “we need to be excellent in everything we do.”
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Daily Emerald
January 7, 2009
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