The Stanford Alumni Association (SAA) has cancelled the Class Day lecture component of graduation weekend for the Class of 2015 commencement, according to Leslie Winick, SAA Director of Alumni and Student Class Outreach.

Data collected by surveying members of the classes of 2010 through 2014 showed that graduating seniors did not feel well served by this event, leading to SAA’s decision to to drop it from this year’s commencement schedule in hopes of better serving students with alternate activities.

Class Day is an event that originated in the mid-1970s, and the lecture component has featured world-class Stanford faculty as speakers.

The surveys asked students to rate the general importance and their personal satisfaction with graduation programming. Graduating seniors consistently did not feel well served by the Class Day lecture event, noting that they felt there were too many speeches or talks over the course of the weekend.

“The input from the recent grads makes clear that Commencement weekend is extraordinarily busy and even hectic for students; what they really wanted was more unscheduled time to be with friends and family,” Winick wrote in an email to The Daily.

In contrast, other commencement weekend events proved popular in the surveys collected. For example, Senior Dinner on the Quad consistently has a participation rate of up to 98 percent of the graduating class, and the surveyed recent graduates regularly ranked this event as their favorite one of the weekend.

According to Winick, the Class of 2015 can still expect three other commencement programs from SAA: a Senior Series of Life Skills Workshops, Senior Dinner on the Quad and the Senior Toast.

 

Contact Sarah Moore at smoore6 ‘at’ stanford.edu.