Texas State University recently announced that, beginning with the December 2026 commencement, it will change how it recognizes doctoral graduates by moving hooding from university-wide commencement to separate ceremonies hosted by each college. As doctoral students who learned about this change indirectly, we met with university leadership to better understand what was changing, why they made the decision, and how they would evaluate the new model.

We understand the logistical challenges Texas State is attempting to address, and we are not asking the university to reject smaller college celebrations that students may value. We are asking Texas State to reconsider whether removing doctoral hooding from university-wide commencement is necessary to accomplish their goal of saving time and, just as importantly, to address the larger issues of student consultation, communication, equity, resources, and evaluation that became apparent as we tried to understand how this decision was made.

This petition states the specific requests we ask Texas State to consider. For more context, please read the background below, which explains how we arrived at this point, details our meeting with the Provost, and explains why we believe our requests deserve further consideration. 

We invite students, faculty, staff, alumni, families, feiends, and members of the broader Texas State community who support these requests to add their names to sign this petition. (You can sign anonymously, if that would make you more comfortable.)

Our Requests to Texas State University

1. Create a formal expectation for meaningful student consultation before decisions that substantially affect the student experience. Texas State already has mechanisms for student participation, including Student Government, the Graduate House of Representatives, and graduate student representation on the Graduate Council. Use those voices while decisions are being considered, not after students discover a decision has been made. In addition, communicate guest access and ticket policies early enough for families, particularly international families, to make travel and visa arrangements.
2. Establish and publish the criteria used to evaluate the December 2026 pilot before it occurs, and include graduate students and faculty in that evaluation. Those criteria should examine ceremony duration, doctoral and faculty participation at university-wide commencement, attendance at one or both ceremonies, student and family satisfaction, guest access, international student concerns, accessibility, security, equity among colleges, and whether the separate ceremony provides the kind of recognition that students and faculty find meaningful.
3. Conduct a full financial, time, and resource analysis of the two-ceremony model, including the impact on each individual college. The analysis should include direct expenditures as well as faculty and staff labor, event coordination, facilities and utilities, technology, printing, custodial work, setup and teardown, accessibility, parking and traffic management, security and emergency planning, and other in-kind resources. It should also account for where time is being transferred rather than measuring efficiency solely by the length of university-wide commencement.
4. Publish the pilot results and keep reconsideration genuinely available. A pilot should not simply validate a decision already made. Once the results are available, Texas State should explain what the evidence showed and whether it supports continuing, modifying, or reversing the new model.
5. Evaluate alternatives that preserve the benefits of smaller graduate ceremonies without automatically removing doctoral hooding from university-wide commencement. If faculty preparation contributes to delays, consider improving preparation. If other portions of the ceremony can be adjusted, evaluate those options. The fact that college-level hooding ceremonies and doctoral hooding at university-wide commencement have coexisted at Texas State shows these experiences need not be mutually exclusive.
6. Establish equitable and safe standards of support for college hooding ceremonies. If doctoral hooding moves out of university-wide commencement, the quality of the replacement experience should not depend primarily on a student's college's financial resources and should be equitable and safe across each college. 

Texas State is changing as enrollment grows, graduate education expands, and the university continues its run toward R1. We understand that this growth will require the university to reconsider systems designed for a smaller institution, including commencement, but growth should not require us to lose the traditions that give commencement its meaning or reduce the experience of graduates and their families

We appreciate Provost Aswath and Vice Provost Figueroa Flores meeting with us promptly and giving us the opportunity to hear the administration’s reasoning firsthand. We also appreciate your time and willingness to support us in this endeavor.  

By signing, you are asking Texas State to consider these requests, meaningfully evaluate the December 2026 pilot, and include students in determining what commencement will look like going forward.

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The rest of this letter provides context, which explains how we arrived at this point, details our meeting with the Provost, and explains why we believe our requests deserve further consideration. 

Background

We initially learned about this change not through an official university announcement, which prompted questions and a meeting with the Provost's office on September 28, 2026. We met with Dr. Pranesh B. Aswath, Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs, and Dr. Jorge F. Figueroa Flores, Vice Provost for Academic Innovation, whose responsibilities include coordinating commencement planning and execution.

Till now, doctoral candidates were hooded by their faculty advisors during university-wide commencement. Their names were called, they crossed the stage, and their hooding was displayed on the large screen before fellow graduates, faculty, family, friends, and the broader community. Beginning with the December 2026 commencement, doctoral students will instead be hooded by their advisors during a separate ceremony hosted by their college. Colleges will determine whether those ceremonies will include master's students in addition to doctoral students.

Doctoral graduates may still choose to attend the university-wide commencement. They will cross the stage, receive their actual diploma cover from the president, and have their photograph taken. They simply will not be hooded there. Doctoral students therefore have two ceremonies available to them and may attend one or both.

Rationale

University leadership explained that commencement is taking too long, and President Kelly Damphousse wants each commencement ceremony to last no more than 90 minutes. Their solution is to remove hooding from the main ceremony, since they believe it’s time-consuming. They explained that some faculty do not practice beforehand and fumble while placing the hood on graduates, and that congratulatory hugs between faculty and students can add additional time.

If faculty preparation contributes to delays, improving that preparation is an alternative worth considering before removing hooding from university-wide commencement. And if a few additional seconds allow an advisor to congratulate a student they have mentored for years, those seconds deserve to be weighed against the significance of the moment they preserve.

Provost Aswath mentioned he would never tell a student or advisor that they could not offer a congratulatory hug, recognizing that this is a special moment for both the student and the faculty member. We appreciate how clearly he recognizes the significance of that moment, but it leads us back to one of our central questions: if this moment is meaningful enough that students and advisors should not be rushed through it, why are we removing it from the public eye?

Whose time is saved?

Texas State conducts several commencement ceremonies over two days, and leadership explained that a sufficient time buffer must exist between ceremonies for graduates and families to exit the arena, take photographs, participate in the traditional river jump, get cleaned up, and leave the parking lot, to allow the next wave of graduates and guests to arrive. That is a real logistical problem, and one we fully understand.

Leadership then explained that commencement is already an extraordinarily long commitment for administrators. We were told they spend approximately 16 hours participating in commencement-related events and ceremonies. We do not dismiss that labor, but it brings us back to the question we asked in the meeting: whose time are we saving? If an administrative change saves time for one group by transferring additional time demands to students, faculty, families, staff, and individual colleges, then the time has not necessarily disappeared. It has moved, and any evaluation of whether the new model is more efficient should account for that transfer.

We asked university leadership whose time this change is actually intended to save. Under this new model, a doctoral student who wants both the traditional hooding experience and participation in university-wide commencement must now attend two ceremonies.  In addition, because the separate hooding ceremony will also have limited seating determined by individual colleges, some family members and friends may not be able to attend the ceremony in which the student's most significant doctoral recognition actually occurs: their hooding.

We specifically raised concerns for international students, whose families may need to travel internationally, obtain visas, purchase expensive airfare, arrange lodging, and structure a very short visit around graduation. When we raised the additional burden placed on students and families by requiring them to attend two ceremonies instead of one to receive the experiences previously contained within one, the response was a shrug and, “I'm sorry.”

Were Students Consulted?

We asked whether faculty and students were consulted before making this decision. Leadership told us that they had been in close conversations with college deans and had recently spoken at the Staff Senate. We followed up with a more specific question: “Did you speak to any students?” The answer was no.

This is particularly difficult to understand because Texas State already has formal structures for incorporating student voices, including Student Government, the Graduate House of Representatives, and graduate student representation on the Graduate Council, yet none appears to have been used to seek graduate students' input before a decision that directly changes their experience at commencement. Consultation does not mean students must approve every administrative decision; it means those affected by a significant change should have an opportunity to identify consequences that may otherwise be overlooked.

Who will bear the cost?

We also asked about the financial and logistical costs of requiring individual colleges to host an additional ceremony, including staffing, faculty time, event coordination, accessibility, security, and other resources. We questioned where colleges would find the funding and whether those resources might be better directed toward student needs, such as conference travel, research, and professional development, particularly given the reductions in Doctoral Students’ funding.

Leadership responded that “we are not talking about a lot of money,” estimating the additional cost of these ceremonies at approximately $1,000. They explained that the university would provide the venue, while colleges could decide how much to spend on decorations and refreshments. This raises additional questions about the estimate itself: Is approximately $1,000 the expected cost per college, per ceremony, or for the entire university? Does that estimate include only direct expenditures, or does it account for staff and faculty labor, event coordination, electricity and other utilities, setup and teardown, custodial services, technology, accessibility accommodations, parking and traffic management, security and emergency planning, and printing that must now be obtained elsewhere? 

Leadership also noted that the main commencement ceremony is much more expensive and includes paid performers and other production costs, including the mariachi band, choir, and drones. We do not dispute that commencement is an expensive production, nor are we arguing that artists and performers should not be compensated for their skilled work. Our question is much narrower:  What does this new change actually save, and what does it actually cost? Before describing the new 2-ceremonies model as a more efficient solution, Texas State should know the answers!

Are there any evaluation criteria?

University leadership described the December 2026 model as a pilot, so we asked what they hoped to learn from it. We also raised a methodological concern: fall commencement is smaller than spring commencement. If the change is intended to address growing enrollment and increasingly large commencement ceremonies, piloting it during the smaller graduating semester does not test the model under the conditions it is ultimately meant to address. Hence, the pilot risks confirmation bias. 

If the university has already concluded that continued growth makes this model necessary, and the pilot is conducted during a smaller graduation without predetermined measures, almost any ceremony that occurs without major disruption could be interpreted as evidence that the model worked. A meaningful pilot must produce an unbiased conclusion.

Those measures should extend beyond the university-wide ceremony. The university should know how many doctoral graduates attend the college hooding ceremony, how many attend university-wide commencement, and how many attend both. It should also examine faculty participation, student and family satisfaction, guest access, the experiences of international students and their families, accessibility, security, costs and labor by college, and whether the replacement ceremonies provide an equitable experience across the university. If university-wide commencement becomes shorter partly because doctoral students or faculty choose not to attend after participating in another ceremony, that is a policy outcome and should be measured as such.

Who witnesses this transition matters, too. Until now, undergraduate and master’s students, faculty, families, and the broader community could witness a teaching assistant, instructor, mentor, or friend earn their doctorate. As Texas State pursues R1 status, recognizing and making visible its scholars is an important way to demonstrate its growing research capacity and investment in doctoral education. Commencement offers the university an opportunity to showcase these achievements to its broader community. Moving this moment into a smaller ceremony with a limited audience diminishes that visibility and changes the ritual, even if the hood itself remains the same.

Why Does this Matter?

As anthropologists, we understand that rituals and traditions are not peripheral to institutions; they are central to how institutions communicate and reproduce values, identity, belonging, status, and transition. Doctoral students spend years working toward the milestones that mark our own rite of passage, and hooding is one such ritual—symbolizing the culmination of years of work and our transition into a new stage of academic and professional life. Provost Aswath repeatedly acknowledged this, describing hooding as an important rite of passage not only for doctoral students but also for their faculty advisors who have worked closely with them throughout their doctoral journey.

A doctoral hood is not simply another piece of regalia placed over someone’s shoulders. It marks the completion of the university’s highest academic degree and the graduate’s entry into a scholarly community. For those of us entering academic careers, doctoral regalia is not something we wear once and leave behind; we will wear these gowns at academic ceremonies throughout our professional lives.

The first time we wear this regalia, as our advisors place the doctoral hood over our shoulders, marks a rite of passage we have spent years working toward. This achievement deserves recognition and honor. Texas State should uphold that recognition and show its doctoral graduates the respect they have earned, in keeping with the university’s own promise: Once a Bobcat, Always a Bobcat.