The last big commencement?

Sitting on the football field for commencement yesterday afternoon - on a black plastic chair, set on plastic artificial turf, and supplied with lukewarm to hot water in plastic bottles stashed in the sun - I was moved and surprised and gratified, as always, by the opportunity to celebrate what students had accomplished.

And I also realized the days of this kind of ceremony are numbered. Our university does two ceremonies, organized by college disciplines, to keep the time down to about 2 1/2 hours each. Three years in a row, the temperature (made about 15 degrees F hotter by the plastic turf) has caused the afternoon event to be shortened - national anthem, student speaker, calling of names, moving of tassels, done. No one really minds fewer speeches. This year, too, the student brass ensemble playing Pomp and Circumstance was hidden behind the stage, to keep them in the shade made by the backdrop.

Water (which was not provided last year) was plentiful, but baked in the sun from being staged under those black plastic chairs. Cooler water was offered to students as they came off the stage. Most gratefully accepted. Thousands of single-use plastic water bottles were (I hope) headed for recycling, but likely many of them wound up as garbage.

All that heat in mid June and all that fossil-fuel based plastic are related. Certainly, not every commencement Saturday will be hotter than the last. This one was a few degrees cooler than last year, not that we could tell on the field. But the trend is clear: the university will have to consider scheduling both its commencement ceremonies in the morning, or moving one to the evening. Or holding more, smaller ceremonies, all indoors.

Some will call this climate resilience. And I guess it is. The big outdoor stadium commencement ceremony likely won’t be missed by many. But it is one of the litany of things we are losing because we refuse to come to grips with the climate crisis.

I didn’t take pictures yesterday, so here’s one from a few years ago, as a marker of the kind of big outdoor celebrations we might see only a few more times.

Be safe and well and take care of yourself, your loved ones, and our planet.