By Justin Muszynski

For the past two years CCSU has been allowing students to walk at the commencement ceremonies with as little as 95 total credits accumulated, despite the minimum amount of credits for graduation being 122.

When President Jack Miller was asked about this situation he had this to say: “I must admit that I am quite surprised as I was not aware of all this. I would think 95 credits is too few to be able to walk.”

Dr. Joseph Paige, Associate Vice President of Student Affairs, admits that this was not an ideal situation, but says it would have been impossible for the registrar’s office to evaluate all the applications.

“During the past two years, we have allowed students to ‘walk’ with 95 credits completed only because the Registrar’s office was severely shorthanded with only one graduation evaluator instead of the normal number of three,” said Paige. “This was due to the hiring freeze that we were under. Because of this, there was only one person to evaluate over 2000 final requests for graduation as well as hundreds of initial graduation evaluations for potential August and December graduates.”

According to CCSU’s website in regards to graduation standards, the policy clearly states that undergraduate student seeking to participate in the commencement ceremonies should have all but nine or fewer credits completed. It continues that students with nine credit hours that need to be completed aren’t normally allowed to walk early but in the case of extraordinary circumstances they may appeal to the Vice President of Student Affairs or a designee.

Dr. Carl Lovitt, the Vice President of Academic Affairs, who considers this a “non-issue,” clarifies that a student being allowed to walk at the graduation ceremony and actually graduating are two different things.

“This does not mean that they are graduating early; it simply means that they are already enrolled for all of the credits that they will need to graduate that summer or the next semester and that they will be entitled to walk across the stage,” said Lovitt. “They will not graduate and receive their diploma until they have actually completed all of those credits.”

Paige says that the decision was made by himself and the Registrar, who has retired since then. The Registrar’s office declined to comment on this issue.

Brittany Everett, a former student of CCSU who walked early at the graduation ceremonies, was part of commencement in the spring of 2010 and finished the graduation requirements later that year. She says she’s surprised how easy the whole process was saying it really wasn’t much of a process at all.

“I was surprised that they let me walk because I needed 12 more credits to finish,” said Everett. “I literally just walked down to the Registrar’s and asked and they said ‘yes.’ I didn’t know what the policy was but I figured it couldn’t hurt to ask, after they said yes the lady there filled out the application for me and that was that.”

Ramon Hernandez, the Assistant Dean of Student Affairs, however didn’t know that this was happening but vaguely remembers this being an issue years ago.

“Ninety five credits sounds really low,” Hernandez said. “There was a situation two years ago where we were short staffed and they were letting students walk with almost a whole semester left but I don’t think it’s happened since then.”

Hernandez also questions what a student’s motivation would be to walk if they needed to complete a full semester after the ceremony.

“I’m not really sure why someone would want to do that but anyone can apply and the worst that can happen is they say no.”

Everett though says she may have had an issue if she had to wait for the spring to participate in the commencement ceremonies because she may have had to move out of the state by then.

“The reason why I figured I would ask is because there was a possibility I may have had to move in January,” said Everett. “If I finished in December and moved in January I wouldn’t be able to walk with the school that I was getting my degree from.”

Lovitt says now that there isn’t a problem with being under staffed and the university’s policy will be more strictly followed.

“Now that we have a full complement of degree auditors, we will adhere to our established policy of allowing only students with 9 or fewer credits remaining to walk,” said Lovitt.