by Mike Myers
Staff Writer
The University of La Verne’s annual academic awards ceremony was canceled this year following budgetary and scheduling problems.
“This awards ceremony has been canceled due to a variety of things,” said Al Clark, associate vice president of academic affairs.
“The ceremony is too long; it lasts about four to five hours in length,” he said. “In the past, students collected their awards and left, leaving no one in the audience at the end of the ceremony.”
The second issue, Clark said, is that the University is asking all departments to reduce the spending funds towards the end of the year.
“Scheduling has been another issue of concern,” Clark said. “The staff was not sure on when to have this ceremony, during the day, at night or on the weekends.”
“All students have different schedules and other priorities and we don’t want to leave anyone out of the ceremony that deserves to be there,” he said. “We are deciding on how to make it better, faster and make it so that the parents of the students getting the awards can attend also.
“Basically there is a bunch of issues that has caused this ceremony to be canceled,” he said.
The awards were distributed to the departments to be handed out to the respective students.
“I am disappointed that the academic awards presentations were canceled, senior biology major Victor Delgado said.
“I am excited each year when they come up,” he said.
“The faculty is surprised that some of the awards have not been handed out yet,” Clark said.
The English department passed out the awards to their students at the Shakespeare party they had a few weeks ago.
Other departments might follow suit.
“I know that the plan for some colleges next year is to pass out their academic awards at the faculty meetings they have each month,” Clark said.
