The May 2005 commencement ceremony will take place on a Friday evening instead of a Saturday afternoon.

The university-wide ceremony will begin at 7:30 p.m. May 13 in Oklahoma Memorial Stadium, said Becky Heeney, OU commencement coordinator. Convocation ceremonies for each college will begin at 10:30 a.m. May 14 and continue throughout the day.

Heeney said commencement was moved to a separate day from convocations to make it a "focal point" of graduation.

"We really want to highlight commencement as an opportunity for the community to celebrate as a whole," she said.

The ceremony's move to Friday may be evidence of OU President David L. Boren's goal of promoting unity within the university community. In an Oct. 27 e-mail, he said the commencement ceremony is arguably the most important shared ceremony of the entire academic year.

"As a university we seek to build a strong sense of community," Boren said in the e-mail. "[A university] is not just a collection of individual colleges dedicated to different disciplines. It is a unified institution."

Derek Kolb, international and area studies and public administration senior, said the commencement ceremony is too impersonal.

"It's so impersonal that I think a lot of people just don't care to go to it," he said.

Heeney said OU aims to boost commencement attendance, but attending the ceremony will not be mandatory to receive tickets to convocations.

"We haven't moved in that direction at all," she said. "I don't think anyone feels comfortable at this point forcing students to come to commencement in order to get a ticket to convocation."

Heeney said OU is trying to take a "more positive approach" to boosting commencement attendance. She said this year's ceremony would be more of a celebration than in previous years.

"I think that we're going to see more of a celebratory air-more of a celebration on Friday evening and an opportunity for the university to celebrate as a whole," she said. "We will also be ending the evening with a pyrotechnics display."

Kyle Pickens, University College freshman, said food would be a good incentive to boost attendance.

"As long as they kept it as short as they could and didn't drag it out forever," Pickens said.

Kolb also said making the ceremony shorter would be a good incentive to attend.

"It's usually so long," he said. "All of the recognition gets a little tedious."

Heeney said having the commencement ceremony Friday evening would also alleviate stress for families.

"It will provide an atmosphere that's less rushed for them," she said. "So many people had such a tight time frame when it was all day Saturday."

Kolb said it would be easier forfamilies to have commencement and convocations on the same day.

"I think it would be difficult for [my family] to come down on a Friday evening and find somewhere to spend the night and then everybody get up and do something the next day," he said. "I think it's more feasible for families to do it all in one day."

Students who have final exams May 13 may have to plan ahead in order to make it to commencement on time. Students who could be impacted the most are those who have a class at 4:30 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays. The final exams for those courses are scheduled from 4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. May 13, according to the OU Online Enrollment Web site, enroll.ou.edu.

"Our hope is that that doesn't impact very many students," she said. "We will work with anyone whose schedule is tied or who needs assistance in any way."

Heeney said students with schedule conflicts would not be able to get out of their final exams, but arrangements could be made to make getting to commencement less stressful.

"There's no way we can get anyone out of finals, but we could help deliver caps and gowns or if they want to store caps and gowns somewhere on campus-things like that so we can make things as easy as possible for them," she said.

Updates and more information about the May 2005 commencement ceremony are available on its Web site, www.ou.edu/commencement.
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