Wait a minute. Columbia isn’t canceling graduation. They are doing it by school so smaller ceremonies. Harvard did much the same back in the day at the Harvard undergrad graduation ceremonies I attended. It was much more personal.
To GC Parent: Columbia has done the same thing for a long time. We had around 600 graduating seniors compared to thousands of graduates of all the other schools that make up the University. Tha University ceremony was held on the South Field where the recent protest encampment was.
The smaller College Class Day on the Quad where the entrance to Hamilton Hall is located also gave the Valedictorian a chance to make his traditional speech. In our class, John Vaio, a Latin major gave his speech in Latin in which he twitted Harvard for giving up on Latin. His most memorable line: “O miserable men of Harvard.”
Our local state university does the same. There’s one big ceremony for all graduating students, but no one walks across the stage there. They walk across the stage at the smaller ceremonies held for each school at the college.