SUNY Schenectady may drop plans for drive-through commencement ceremony

PHOTOGRAPHER: Erica Miller

SUNY Schenectady graduate Shabana Mohamed, of Schenectady, celebrates on stage while receiving her diploma from SUNY Schenectady President Steady Moono during their outdoor Grad Walk at SUNY Schenectady on Thursday, May 20, 2021.

SCHENECTADY — SUNY Schenectady is rethinking its plans for a drive-through graduation ceremony and may instead hold sit-down commencement exercises, if the COVID pandemic doesn’t worsen.

The college committed to the parking lot ceremony in January, when the area was in the throes of its worst surge yet in COVD infections.

But with virus activity greatly diminished in this region, and with every other college in the area planning a sit-down ceremony for students and their families, some SUNY Schenectady students have voiced unhappiness with plans for the drive-through ceremony.

–More from Schenectady – The Daily Gazette–

A group of students protested outside the school Wednesday.

On Thursday, the school’s Commencement Committee reconvened and set up a second scenario:

If a workable plan for an outdoor sit-down ceremony can be devised in the next several weeks, and if there isn’t an elevated risk of disease spread in the community when the May 20 ceremony data approaches, the students may get their wish.

SUNY Schenectady President Steady Moono said after Wednesday’s protest that he sympathizes with and agrees with the students’ unhappiness about plans for a drive-through ceremony.

Some students at the two-year school have spent their entire college careers under the cloud of COVID and deserve as much recognition as they can get for persevering, he said.

“The bottom line is we want to celebrate our students’ success,” he said. “These are the inspirational moments.”

But Moono said the priority is safety, now and when the ceremony went into the planning phase.

“January into early February we were in the midst of a new variant that was very significant. That was the world we were functioning in. [The committee] had to react to the information they had at that point.”

State data show Schenectady County’s positive COVID test rate exceeded 20% on a few days in early January. Through the entire month, 8,271 positive tests were lab-confirmed among the county’s population, or roughly one for every 19 residents.

COVID metrics in the county and in the rest of the Capital Region are much better in early April than early January, but not quite as good as they were in early March.

The picture still looks good, Moono said, but how the BA.2 variant will trend is unknown.

–More News – The Daily Gazette–

“That is a critical question … this could change tomorrow, next week,” he said. “Today it’s great that we are in this position. But I think we still need to be vigilant.”

All other area colleges indicate they will hold sit-down commencement ceremonies for 2022 graduates except Fulton-Montgomery Community College, which hasn’t posted details yet.

Union, Siena, Saint Rose, Russell Sage, SUNY Polytechnic, SUNY Adirondack and Hudson Valley Community College plan indoor events. SUNY Cobleskill, Skidmore, UAlbany, RPI, and the Albany colleges of Law, Medicine and Pharmacy plan outdoor ceremonies.

Life at SUNY Schenectady, as at other colleges, has been fundamentally affected by COVID over the past two years.

It has altered schedules and teaching practices, sent students looking for food assistance, claimed the lives of loved ones, prompted the school to become a vaccination site and saw more than 30 of its employees trained as contact tracers.

“We have a cadre of students [whose] entire higher education experience would have been during the COVID era,” Moono said. “I am so proud of our students because of their resilience.”

SUNY Schenectady, he said, will throw the best celebration it can for them.