In the spring of 2013, the MATC administration began talks which would eventually become a decision not to have a winter graduation ceremony this year. A decision that started as an effort to save money for some soon became an outrage for others.
According to the Local 212, rumors began to surface at the Local 212 membership meeting in September, as students and parents began to ask why there wouldn’t be a ceremony.
Subsequently, a petition had been presented to Archie Graham, the director of Student Life at MATC’s downtown campus, resulting in no response.
For the Local 212 and according to local212.org, this is just another slap in the face, “the latest symptom pointing to a disease that plagues MATC — an obvious lack of communication and a passing lip service to the concept of shared governance.”
But a story always has two sides and Graham agrees. According to Graham, it’s true that the decision was in the process of being made in the interest of saving money.
“It really boils down to dollars and cost,” Graham said. “You have to sometimes look at the number of participants and whether or not it is being cost effective,” he said of the decision making process. “The college did start to do some analysis of that to see whether or not that was something we could still afford.” He followed up his comment by saying, “I’ve been here about 14, 15 years. Back when I first started we used to only have one ceremony, so this is nothing new.”
Graham says that the administration looked into some other ideas including “divisional ceremonies,” or respective ceremonies at each campus, the negative side of which was limiting the amount of family members that could come to the ceremony.
“I refuse to tell a graduate that he can bring a limited amount of people,” Graham said. According to Graham, after mulling over the pro’s and con’s of each scenario, they went back to the original schedule of graduation ceremonies for one more year with the idea that, next year, they’d re-evaluate whether or not they should only do one ceremony a year, divisional ceremonies, or the tried-and-true but pricier method, a winter and a summer ceremony.
“We know the ceremony is important to students and we want to see them feel comfortable and be recognized for their achievement. That’s important to us but I don’t think students want to pay an extra 30 or 40 bucks. Right now, we already take a lot of money out of their pockets. If we can make an event for them without taking money out of their pocket, let’s consider that.”
As for the petition, Graham says, “Yes, we were aware of it and we were still trying to figure out ways to make [the ceremony] work.”
He said that when the petition was presented to him, the decision hadn’t been officially made. The administration was still looking into other options for the ceremony so there was no need to reply at that time.
Graham followed up by stating, “We make decisions to try to do the best we can with the information we have in the best interests of all and, at times, we’re not going to make everyone happy. There’s nothing wrong with an administration looking back and saying, ‘Wow, let’s rethink this,’ but a petition of 12 people is not representative of the 12,000 or 15,000 people that are [at MATC].
“That’s not a groundswell but it’s enough to say that we will have a ceremony. Whether it’s smaller or broken into pieces, we will have one. At orientation I say that, when you graduate, you will walk across a stage that’s three times the size of the one I’m standing on so, no matter what I have to do, students will get their names read. We will make that program meaningful so that the student feels good about their achievement.”
Kevin Mulvenna, vice president of Local 212, feels that it was a total oversight on the part of those who initially made the decision not to have a ceremony. Mulvenna said of his job, “As teachers, we do three things: We educate, we graduate, and we help our students get jobs. How can we not do a third of our jobs? We should throw a party to celebrate their success.”
When speaking to both representatives, it seems that one thing the teachers union and the administration actually have in common is the intended result. Both parties want students to be taught, both want students’ lives to be fulfilling and both want students to be proud of what they’ve completed. There’s no question they both care or they wouldn’t be here in the first place. In this case however, one party is reminiscent of the bus driver who skips stops to stay on time, while the other may not be paying attention to the speed limit.
Like most impasses that occur these days, perhaps this one calls for a little good-old-fashioned meeting in the middle.