LFTE: We’ve given many years, thousands of dollars — CLA students shouldn’t have to graduate in a tent

As a member of the College of Liberal Arts, all graduating students, including myself, have completed at least the 120 credits mandatory to earn a bachelor’s degree in journalism and media communication from Colorado State University. I am an in-state student, and while this has saved me some in tuition money — as have scholarships and the College Opportunity Fund — my four years at CSU have still been a financial investment that numbers in the tens of thousands of dollars.

My name is Allie Seibel, and I am the Editor in Chief of The Collegian. I write this editorial over the outrage and hurt I feel at the decision to hold the CLA, College of Agricultural Sciences and College of Natural Resources commencement ceremonies in what the university has designated the “ceremony tent.”

CSU’s Commencement website notes that this tent is “at Plum & Meridian,” which places it, by our approximation, between the West Lawn, The Lagoon and the Student Recreation Center, in that grassy area where events like RailJam and campus concerts happen annually.

The graduation changes at CSU have already not been popular among students, and I must agree with them. While a universitywide ceremony might feel exciting in Canvas Stadium, it is not what students or families turn out for. We show up for the moment we’ve been waiting for since that first day on campus: when we can walk across the stage and receive our diploma covers.

In the past, the tradition of hosting collegewide ceremonies in Moby Arena provided both the appropriate sense of pomp and circumstance while also relieving families the expenditure of staying in Fort Collins for multiple days during some of the most intense price-gouging of the year. My family booked a hotel room pretty much the day bookings became available — all the way back in June 2025 — to avoid paying several thousands of dollars to be present for my graduation, anticipating that my multiple ceremonies would be spread out over a variety of days and hotels would be hard to come by.

This was before they found out that the journalism and media communication ceremony would be held at 8 p.m., outside and in a tent. I started to tell extended family members to not bother coming — or only to come for my Honors ceremony, which takes place at the more reasonable noon time slot inside in the Lory Student Center ballrooms, for the only good opportunity to see me “honored.”

This disappointing decision — one that several people have appealed and complained about in terms of dignity, fairness and also accessibility in things like bathrooms to university administration and received bland responses in return — reflects a greater dissatisfying habit CSU has of undervaluing anything that is not the College of Business, Natural Sciences, Engineering or Health and Human Sciences.

As various responses to email complaints have claimed, even if the attempt to shorten ceremonial days by combining majors into larger ceremonies meant that some of the locations where commencement took place last year — including the Stadium Club at Canvas, the Lory Student Center Theatre and the University Center of the Arts — had to be eliminated to save families the financial stress of multiple-day attendance at commencement, the entire commencement process will still take multiple days.

The College of Liberal Arts has already been shunted in the development of the Clark Building, leaving most of our home departments — journalism, political science, history, economics and anthropology — in the only wing of the building not to be renovated. The College of Liberal Arts boasts the third-highest enrollment of any college at CSU, with 3,968 students this semester. The College of Agricultural Sciences is home to 1,768 students, and the Warner College of Natural Resources has 1,639, according to current enrollment numbers.

We all must complete 120 credits at this school to graduate, which means that, despite major, college, minor or intended field of study, many of our tuition amounts will be, before financial aid, relatively the same. As such, it represents a disappointing disparity in university dedication to our commencement to host some ceremonies indoors and some outdoors at various times of day in May, when the weather can be unpredictable. Our degrees from this university should be valued equally. We deserve more as graduating seniors.

Respectfully,

Allie Seibel, The Collegian editor-in-chief