The opportunity for Syracuse University students to dually enroll across a selective number of its various schools and colleges is often a beneficial one. But graduating seniors may be forced to compromise the recognition of their academic strides due to conflicting commencement ceremony times.

For this year’s commencement weekend, the convocations of the School of Architecture, College of Engineering and Computer Sciences, the Martin J. Whitman School of Management and the College of Arts and Sciences all occur at the same time during the morning of May 14. There is also overlap among the ceremonies of the School of Information Studies, the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and the School of Education at noon.

Though some students may have concerns about facing the touch decision of figuring out which convocation to attend, they should keep in mind that months of planning by SU faculty, staff and administrators are invested in ensuring commencement runs smoothly. Any problems that dual students run into on this big weekend are incidental and it should be taken into consideration that there are thousands of schedules to accommodate when convocation timetables are drawn up.

While SU conducting multiple convocations at once may not be ideal for any dually enrolled students affected, staggering the ceremonies across commencement weekend would not be feasible either. If graduation were to be spread across a Friday, Saturday and Sunday, it would further complicate the travel plans of students and family members.

There will arguably be fewer students struggling over whether to don their cap and gown for their engineering degree or business degree come Saturday morning than for other paired majors. And if anything, commencement planners should look into setting the College of Arts and Sciences’ convocation apart in the coming years, as the school is likely home to more dual majors than any other college.
Even if none of the convocations conflicted on paper, students should have a holistic understanding that they are not the only stakeholders in the ceremony scheduling process. As it stands, SU faculty and staff members, chairs on the planning committee, students, speakers and family members already have to make some form of sacrifice in order to attend commencement festivities.

Heading into future years, commencement planners can only hope to minimize overlap at best and dually enrolled students will have to divide their time wisely. Graduating classes are made up of thousands of students, and when planning events on this large a scale, it is simply not feasible for everyone to be satisfied.