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UCI kicks off weekend of commencement ceremonies

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Wednesday, July 24th 2024

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UCI kicks off weekend of commencement ceremonies

During the graduation ceremony, some students engaged in brief acts of protest while walking across the platform with UCI dignitaries

Graduate Zhong Wang celebrates with friends and family after the UCI commencement ceremony for the School of Education and School of Physical Sciences at the Bren Events Center in Irvine, CA, on Friday, June 14, 2024. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Graduate Zhong Wang celebrates with friends and family after the UCI commencement ceremony for the School of Education and School of Physical Sciences at the Bren Events Center in Irvine, CA, on Friday, June 14, 2024. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Jonathan Horwitz
By | jhorwitz@scng.com
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UC Irvine celebrated Friday morning its first of 12 commencement ceremonies taking place over the next few days.

Chancellor Howard Gillman conferred degrees on nearly 700 graduates of the School of Education and School of Physical Sciences as more than 4,000 guests watched inside the Bren Events Center. In his address to students, he commended their determination.

“Graduates, consider your journey — all those years of dreaming, aspiring, planning, so many long days and late nights,” Gillman said. “Historic challenges to overcome, the setbacks that you pushed through, persisting through every adversity — an epic journey, a very high mountaintop to climb, and here you are. Take a moment to appreciate the magnitude of your accomplishment.”

Those historic challenges include the COVID-19 pandemic that led to the cancellation of many of these students’ high school graduations, and, more recently, a war in Gaza that has inspired student activism around the world during their final year of college.

Keynote commencement speaker for the School of Education, Compton College President Keith Curry — a UCI graduate — acknowledged the war in his speech which was mostly about encouraging young people to work hard to build and maintain sincere personal and professional relationships.

“We bear witness to the crisis in Gaza and the suffering of millions, a pain that we feel in our communities right here at home,” he said, drawing applause from the audience.

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Graduates Sara-Ann Zheng, left, Stephanie Kim, center, and Emily Nguyen film themselves moving their tassels after receiving their Masters of Arts in Teaching degree during the UCI commencement ceremony for the School of Education and School of Physical Sciences at the Bren Events Center in Irvine, CA, on Friday, June 14, 2024. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

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The war in Gaza has created a tense mood on UCI’s campus in recent months, especially since UCI students constructed a makeshift Palestinian solidarity encampment near the Physical Sciences Lecture Hall in late April. After a group of activists barricaded themselves inside that building on May 15, UCI called upon over 20 local law enforcement agencies to come to campus in riot gear and clear the building as well as the growing encampment with hundreds of students around it.

That afternoon, 47 people were arrested, and since then, students and faculty groups have expressed concern that the administration’s response violated the community’s rights to free speech and assembly.

In recent weeks, student activist groups have called for Gillman’s resignation while picketing around the campus administrative building and outside his private residence. The graduate student government approved a vote of no confidence against him, and UCI graduate student teachers and researchers joined a statewide strike against the UC system over complaints they have with how administrators at various UC campuses handled Gaza protests.

While an Orange County judge temporarily restrained the strike last week, a state investigation continues into claims of unfair labor practices. Meanwhile, UCI faculty called for an independent investigation into the Gillman administration’s handling of the encampment and, amid commencement ceremonies, met Friday afternoon to continue discussions over how to proceed with that.

All of this led to speculation whether UCI’s commencement ceremonies would be disrupted by protest, but for the most part, Friday’s early ceremony was not.

Around noon, a small group of students unfurled a couple of “Free Palestine” banners from the campus’ arts bridge.

“While students and families celebrate graduation today, we want to make it unignorable that our brothers and sisters in Palestine have no graduation to celebrate,” a student with the UCI Divest group said in an Instagram Live video. The group is calling on UC Irvine to divest funds tied to assets related to Israel.

A UCI security guard told the group they had to remove the banners because they were over a roadway, and they complied.

Before ceremonies began, the university displayed a message on the big screen at the Bren Center saying that UCI respects and values freedom of speech, including the lawful freedom of protest, but a protestor whose actions interfere with the ceremony will be warned and, if they continue to interfere, escorted out of the venue.

“Protest is welcome so long as it does not unduly interfere with the ability of the speaker to deliver the message or the ability of the audience to receive the speaker’s message,” the notice read, with a link to university policy concerning the disruption of university activities.

During the ceremony, a couple of students engaged in brief acts of protest while walking across the platform with UCI dignitaries.

A chemistry graduate student shouted “Free Palestine” as he walked across the stage before shaking hands with Dean James Bullock. Another graduate received loud cheers as she waved a black and white checkerboard keffiyeh, a symbol of Palestinian autonomy, over her head. And, from the stage, one graduate unfurled a banner that read “UC divest from genocide,” also receiving loud applause. She once more displayed the banner during the recessional.

Gillman was received by the crowd with light applause, and his speech was not interrupted.

This academic year, UCI will confer more than 11,000 degrees.

Nearly half of the more than 9,300 students receiving bachelor’s degrees are first-generation college students, university officials said. In addition, UCI, a federally designated Hispanic-serving institution, will grant bachelor’s degrees to more than 2,200 Latino students, a number that has steadily increased for the past decade.

“This graduating class highlights how well UC Irvine is serving the people of our state by offering a world-class education to the best and brightest students, regardless of their financial circumstances, and acting as a powerful engine of upward economic mobility,” Gillman said in a statement.

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