A UTRGV student’s post on social media voicing her displeasure with the university’s decision to allow fans to attend athletics games but not offer an in-person graduation sparked conversation on the topic.
The post on the UTRGV Students Group Facebook page is referring to a doubleheader the men’s and women’s basketball teams will play at home against Texas A&M-Corpus Christi on Wednesday at the Bert Ogden Arena.
As previously reported by Vaquero Radio, UTRGV announced that the Fall 2020 in-person commencement is postponed and will be offered virtually on Dec. 12.
Criminal justice senior Jessica Escamilla shares the reason why she made the post.
“I wanted to see if there was anybody else feeling the way that I did, which, me and a lot of other students are, you know, disheartened to hear that we couldn’t have an in-person graduation,” Escamilla said.
Escamilla tells Vaquero Radio what options she believes the university should have considered to offer an in-person graduation.
“I would like to think that if they were able to put this together for athletics, that there could have been a way to put together, you know, a combination of a virtual and in-person graduation,” she said. “And also, maybe limiting the amount of people that are allowed to the graduation, from nine tickets to down to two tickets, that way you can still allow, you know, for spacing between the parents and between the graduates.”
She also said the university could have also considered having an outdoor ceremony.
Associate Vice President for University Marketing and Communications Patrick Gonzales says any university event request goes through a process of approval.
“We have an events committee that reviews all requests for university hosted events or related events and with guidance from our infectious disease and prevention committee.,” Gonzales said. “Those requests are reviewed, and the decision is made whether or not to move forward or not.”
He said the difference between a basketball game and commencement is the anticipation of attendance.
“The basketball game at Bert Ogden holds about 9,500 to 10,000 people. So, the capacity was set to 1,300 to help ensure the safety and health of those who are attending the game and those who are participating in the game,” Gonzales said. “We cannot set a capacity that low and have a successful commencement. Our commencement routinely [has] 3,000 graduates. That’s just graduates. And if you throw in their guests, which last time we had [at] Bert Ogden commencement, we allowed each graduate to have six guests, that puts the expected attendance at over 10,000, almost 15,000 people.”
According to Gonzales, another factor between basketball games and commencement is the choice of going to the events.
“Those who attend the basketball game are doing so by choice, you must buy a ticket,” he said “No one is being forced to attend the basketball game, but if it’s commencement and we had commencement at Bert Ogden, and we announced that we would have commencement, we would pretty much be forcing students who do not want to have an in-person commencement because of the pandemic. We would almost in a way be forcing them to do so, by making a decision to move to a traditional commencement.”
Escamilla said there are some issues when hosting an athletic event such as gatherings could bring up the risk of contracting COVID-19.
“We all know that you can get COVID and not show any symptoms for a couple of days, so that’s always the risk for any event,” she said. “So, I think by doing that, and by encouraging people to go to the games by saying, ‘We’ll give you, you know, a free ticket to go to the games.’ So, by encouraging that gathering, I think you’re putting, you know, students at risk by doing that.”
Gonzales said in order to ensure the safety and health of graduates, staff, employees and guests, the decision was made to move commencement virtually.
According to Gonzales, UTRGV is expecting about 3,000 students to graduate virtually this fall.
For questions or information about graduation, visit utrgv.edu/commencement.
For Vaquero News, I’m Victor Ramirez.
