Hi All! Your support has been instrumental in letting campus admin know that students and greater campus community are not okay with the proposed changes. Thank you ! All of your signatures , comments, along with a letter have been sent last night to campus administrators. I have received a response so far from Provost Brian Jersky (see below) which stated that as of now campus admin will be keeping their proposed changes. He additionally sent out an email to students and staff. It is more important then ever to contact campus administrators to let them know that you do not support the proposed changes and want graduation to be held on upper campus with live music. Here are the campus admin you can email to let them know how you feel. President Jane Close Conoley: presconoley@csulb.edu jane.conoley@csulb.edu Provost Brian Jersky: provost@csulb.edu brian.jersky@csulb.edu VP of Student Affairs Carmen Taylor: carmen.taylor@csulb.edu Dean of Students Piya Bose: studentdean@csulb.edu piya.bose@csulb.edu Should campus officials not enact the requested changes, some students will be organizing a peaceful protest. His response to the personal email I sent him is as follows: Dear Julia Thank you for your email. By now, you may have read my email to the campus community. I hope you are aware that the 2 main reasons for the changes to commencement are safety and accessibility. Cost is a secondary aspect, although the reason it was brought up is to demonstrate that the ceremony as it was, in the upper quad, was not sustainable. We all appreciate and are concerned about student fees. As you know, students themselves pay a fee for their graduation ceremony, and our job in the administration is to ensure it is safe and accessible, as well as beautiful. CSULB has among the lowest fees for the ceremony of all CSU campuses, and we intend to keep it that way. The new venue will see many improvements compared to the old one, including 2 large new video screens, which will show each graduate to the audience here and across the world. There will of course be high quality, recorded music at the graduation, and I assure you it will be special for you and all the graduates we celebrate. Sincerely, Brian Jersky Two points to note: Cost is a very large aspect, and an extremely large motivating factor to these changes, as noted by the Daily 49er, as the campus needs to save $100,000 to meet budget constraints. There are many other areas they can save. I can name at least 10 different ways they can meet this budget shortfall. The new proposed schedule for commencement has only 2 commencement ceremonies on most days compared to the normal 3 as it has been now which most likely means that the already long commencement ceremonies will be even LONGER! Please keep sharing and voicing your opinion! Together we can get back what CSULB students deserve!