Pomp and new circumstances

By: Michelle Anstett
Editor-in-chief

This year’s graduating seniors may be the first to experience some new regulations as the Monmouth College faculty and administration are looking to formalize some aspects of commencement. The proposal for these changes came from the curriculum committee, but has since been sidelined until a consensus can be reached.

The first, and least controversial from the students’ point of view, is the standardization of requirements for who can participate in the commencement ceremony. According to Jane Jakoubek, vice president for academic affairs and dean of faculty, Monmouth’s requirements are much more liberal than those in the rest of the Associated Colleges of the Midwest (ACM) member schools, with Monmouth students being allowed to walk across the stage at commencement if they are within 15 credit hours of graduation and are expected to complete all requirements by the end of first semester the following school year. In the rest of the ACM, however, the majority require that a student be within one or two courses of graduation, averaging out to a maximum of eight credit hours needed.

Sue Dagit, registrar, agrees, saying that having an agrees, saying that having an accurate list of who will be participating in the ceremony is a difficult thing when the requirements are lax, as an accurate program needs to be passed out at the ceremony. If a student suddenly decides he wants to participate in the commencement ceremony, everything is thrown off and the whole ceremony may be off to a bad start.

The college is looking at making the requirements for participation in commencement more stringent in order “to ensure that the ceremony is truly a celebration for those who have worked very hard to get where they’re at,” Dagit said. In making the requirements more strict, the college may be able to afford to be a little less rigorous in the rest of a student’s career, said Mauri Ditzler, president of Monmouth College. “We want to be as rigorous as possible so we can be as humane as possible in the other 3.9 years,” Ditzler said, adding that the college may decide a student should not “walk across the stage unless you’re going to get a diploma.”

The other proposal brought before the curriculum committee, and the one which is drawing the most student feedback, is the proposed regulation of academic regalia at graduation. Traditionally, students who were named summa, magna and cum laude received specific cords or medallions to wear at commencement, along with members of the Honors program and Mortar Board, the senior academic honorary.

In recent years, however, as more honorary societies have been founded, students have been accumulating the amount of regalia worn, with some even deciding to wear things which are not tied to any academic achievement at all. The proposal brought before the curriculum committee outlines allowing only the “traditional” regalia to be worn.

In doing so, students who have not earned a grade point average above 3.5 or who are not members of Mortar Board or the Honors program would not be allowed to wear any recognition of their academic achievements.

While the option of limiting the regalia worn at the actual ceremony was the one proposed, there is also the option of letting students wear other honor cords at the Honors convocation or having achievements listed in the ceremony program.

The investigation of this particular part of the proposal has been taken up by an ad hoc steering committee from the Associated Students of Monmouth College (ASMC), led by ASMC Parliamentarian Luis Oviedo. The committee, once formed, will meet with Jakoubek, Dagit and a member of the curriculum committee to decide what works best for all parties involved.

Richard Harrod, ASMC president, said the “general consensus from the students is that academic regalia should be allowed” but it should not be a free-for-all. Dagit agrees, stating the issue requires deciding “what honors…we want indicated by regalia at the commencement ceremony.”

The steering committee, which will be comprised of approximately 20 students from across campus, freshmen through seniors, will meet with the hope of hammering out a process for determining which regalia will be allowed. “Our hope is that we can get this issue mostly resolved by the end of this semester,” Harrod stated, adding that the key at the moment is finding students to participate as members of the committee.

Ditzler stated that the process is finding a way to “balance tradition with relevance” while not demeaning “the experience for someone who worked very hard for a solid degree” but did not receive the honors which another student did. Jakoubek stated, along the same lines, that the ceremony should “reflect the thoughts of not only the student wearing the honors cords, but also the whole class.”

In discussing the potential end result of the committee, Harrod stated, “My hope is that we can all work together, students working in consort with administration, through a process of civil discourse, can resolve this issue in a way that is acceptable to the majority of Monmouth College students.”