As the Class of 2021 approaches the final months of what can only be considered a difficult and confusing university experience, a lot of us are left dumbstruck by the decision made by the UCI administration to once again cancel the traditional commencement ceremony. 

After a watching students attempt a grueling year and a half of what many have dubbed "Zoom University" and millions of dollars in unjustified tuition costs, the administration has blatantly disregarded the one event that would at least be able to justify the difficulties the students have gone through. The approach to a virtual commencement and POSSIBLE student stage walk has left the Class of 2021 extremely disappointed.

Many of us students have gone through a treacherous path to achieve our degrees. Many of us have undergone thousands of dollars in debt to afford the prestigious education that UCI was supposed to provide. Many of us are first-generation college students that were expecting a moment to embrace all the accomplishments of the last four years of our lives. Many of us had pushed through the mental stress that life had presented to us in the midst of a once-in-a-century pandemic. We carried on, regardless of the misfortunes we and everyone else in the world were forced to endure. 

Meanwhile, as the world begins to see some sort of normalcy returning, schools all over the nation (INCLUDING California) are announcing a full and safe commencement for their 2021 classes. Many of these schools are announcing commencements for mid-May; an entire month before UCI's so called "commencement" is supposed to occur. Rather than pushing for safe alternatives so that UCI can be included in the list of schools that will continue with commencement as scheduled, the administration has decided to take the much easier route of just cancelling the traditional commencement altogether. 

The administration had the opportunity to delay a full, safe commencement for later in the summer. They had the opportunity to make the commencement a voluntary event. They had the opportunity to separate commencement into several days with smaller groups of students and families in order to ensure safe social distancing. They had the opportunity to create a plan to have commencement in the multi-million dollar outdoor park located in the center of the school. They had the opportunity to rent out an open stadium, larger than the Bren Events Center, in order to ensure that students and families alike would feel safe. They had the opportunity to ensure that international and national students were performing a quarantine period of 10 days like the CDC recommends should they not have already received the vaccine.They had the opportunity to do all this while also taking the step to enforce safe social distancing and masking policies; yet, they chose to ignore all the possible options and decided to take away the one event that the Class of 2021 was looking forward to following the close end of this pandemic. 

We as a class deserve our graduation to be as close to what was promised back at the start of our journey in 2017. The one email that the chancellor sent out to the students is not at all sufficient to match the gravity of what it is they are asking us to accept. We will never be able to make up the years that we lost to the pandemic; this doesn't mean our commencement has to be included. If you agree, your signature on this petition will be the most effective way to make this change.