Western Illinois University has released their Spring 2021 commencement arrangements on March 5th, us students have the option to take a photo in front of the Alumni House on WIU’s campus with our cap and gown to include in our virtual commencement slideshow. While this is not a traditional ceremony, this is something that us students feel is not the experience we had been anticipating. Given the pandemic, we have worked hard as a community to keep our students, staff, and families safe. We believe we have achieved great progress at keeping our campus safe, as of March 12th there has been zero cases on the Macomb campus for several weeks, following a 0.7% positivity rate. Us students have worked strenuously these past 4 years at WIU and deserve more effort on the faculty’s end in making a safe and successful spring commencement happen. We feel that this is due to a lack of effort and last minute planning. There are many options in making this commencement happen in person, for example, moving to a larger venue, creating multiple ceremonies, setting up equipment and stage with adequate space upon Hanson field, etc. The student population at the Macomb campus is roughly 5,000 students not including those who are not residing on campus, the spring 2021 graduating class makes up about 1,400 students. We feel that it is possible to make a ceremony happen with this smaller population size. Other neighboring schools with much larger populations have arranged for in-person commencement ceremonies. Schools such as University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign, University of Kentucky, with an average of 30,000 undergraduate students have an intricate plan to provide a safe and secure in-person commencement ceremony. We would like to see more effort from our faculty to provide us students who have stuck by WIU’s side, despite the negative impacts this campus has faced within the last 5 years. As a first generation college student, this is a milestone many of us have looked forward to for several years, an achievement many of us may have not expected to make. The graduating class of 2021 from WIU needs your support as we continue to pursue this experience. WIU needs to take more into consideration about how their students feel and show their support for their students by putting forth more effort in arranging a well-deserved commencement ceremony.