The possibility of this year’s commencement taking place in San Diego State University’s new Student Activity Center became an impossibility after several days of rain set back the completion date to mid-May, said Tony Fulton, SAC project manager.
“Every day it rains is a day the contractors can’t work,” Fulton said. “Then it takes a day for it to dry, and it has to be cleaned. It’s been kind of a rough month here, so we had to pull the plug on commencement.”
Although the anticipated completion date is mid-May, a last-minute reschedule would be disastrous, said Larry Piper of facilities planning and management. Canceling commencement in the SAC was a wise decision, he said.
“It’s unfortunate,” said Barbara Hartung, executive assistant to the president. “But we have to make these decisions fairly early. We have to send out schedules to the students and their parents so they can plan. The builders can’t be certain the SAC will be done in time, so we will have to use the Open Air Theatre, which we’ve used before.”
As in previous years, students in the colleges of Arts and Letters, Business Administration, Professional Studies and Fine Arts, and Sciences will be allotted a limited number of tickets for family and friends who wish to attend the ceremony. Tickets are limited because the OAT seats only 5,000 people. (The new arena in the SAC will seat 12,000 people.)
The number of tickets issued to each graduate is dependent upon the number of graduates, Hartung said. The number of tickets to be allotted to each student will be known in the first part of April, she said, but traditionally they have been between three and six tickets per graduating students. Tickets are not needed for the other colleges’ ceremonies.
“We’ll be piping the ceremony into a few sites around campus so additional folks (without tickets) can see the commencement,” Hartung said. “People want to see. That’s why we’ve been looking forward to the SAC. We had so hoped, but it had not seemed to work out. The Open Air Theatre does provide a wonderful venue though.”
Commencement tickets will be available at this year’s “GradFest” from April 8 through 10 on the south side of the Campus Store, Hartung said. Caps and gowns, photos, announcements and other graduation necessities will also be available, she said.
Commencement for the Division of Undergraduate Studies and the colleges of Business Administration, Health and Human Services, and Education will be held on Saturday, May 24. Commencement for the colleges of Engineering, Arts and Letters, Sciences and PSFA will be held on Sunday, May 25.
