The Daily Forty-Niner took a deeper look at university officials’ rationale for a non-traditional commencement ceremony at Angel Stadium, regarding both ceremonial length and costs to host the graduation.
Rationale: Name calling for 15,000 potential graduates would make the ceremony too long.
CSULB President Jane Close Conoley said, assuming it only took five seconds for each individual to walk across the stage while their name was read, this would add up to just under 21 hours of name-reading and stage-walking alone.
Splitting this time among the nine ceremonies would average three and a half to five hours for each ceremony. Conoley said the stadium is “reset” between each event, and ceremonies over five hours would not allow for the necessary cleaning and maintenance.
Daily Forty-Niner staff found that, while the numbers do add up, they are misleading. A five-second stage-walk, name-call for each graduate would total at just under 21 hours alone.
Divided over nine ceremonies over the course of three days, this would break down to an average of 2.3 hours of name reading per ceremony, with 6.9 hours of name reading a day.
Conoley said ceremonies five hours long would not allow enough time for the stadium to “reset” between each event with the necessary cleaning and maintenance. Name-reading and stage-walking, with the five-second allotment for a potential 15,000 total graduates, would only take up a little over half of a four-hour ceremony.
Furthermore, preceding commencement ceremonies had an average of 12,000 graduates in attendance. Last year, each ceremony was on average two hours, where speeches lasted for a majority of the time after the students processional
Rationale: A non-traditional graduation ceremony at Angel Stadium keeps “student costs down”
The 2019 ceremony, the last one on campus before the pandemic, cost the university just over $1 million, according to information provided through a California Public Records Act request. This includes the set-up of grandstands, name readers and security for a total of nine ceremonies.
Factoring inflation, the cost would be about $1.2 million today.
According to information provided by campus officials, the projected expenses for the 2023 ceremony are $987,000, which is $213,000 cheaper than what the projected cost of $1.2 million for what a ceremony on campus would cost
Data obtained by the Daily Forty-Niner comparing costs of the 2019, 2022 and 2023 commencement ceremonies showed that Angel Stadium is, in fact, the cheaper option, accounting for inflation.
CSU Fullerton’s commencement ceremony this year, which will include the traditional stage-cross and name announcements, totaled at $1.2 million according to CSUF President Framroze Virjee.
Virjee said the three most important elements for CSUF students were to have their name read, walk across the stage and bring as many guests as they wanted at the ceremony.
“I think it’s really important for us to celebrate this milestone in their lives in a way that resonates in a way that they want,” Virjee said.
Angel Stadium was originally chosen for commencement in 2021 because the extra space allowed flexibility for pandemic-regulations. CSULB is among the few Cal States which hasn’t switched back onto campus.
The license agreement with Angel Stadium is an all-inclusive package which saves administration from sourcing out vendors for the equipment to host nine ceremonies on campus.
The agreement with the stadium also states that “additional expense may apply if Licensee set up includes students seated on the field or adds items outside of the $205,000 allotment.”
This means that additional chairs and a stage for students to walk across would be an added expense on the university. An event coordinator from Angel Stadium declined giving an estimate of how much this additional expense would cost.
Costs for the 2023 commencement could potentially amount to the same $1.01 million figure in 2019, should the university opt to include the additional chairs and stage.
“If we had a stadium that would fit 15,000 people, I would bring commencement back to the campus in a heartbeat,” Conoley said.