By: Heather Monahan
Features Editor
Even if you were unable to see first-hand the travesty that was the opening ceremony for the William E. and Ann L. Swan Business Center, you definitely heard about it. In light of these events, I think it’s time to take another look at the mandatory $100 graduation fee.
The business building is one of the school’s main attractions right now, as it should be. We as a community should take pride in our campus and respect the new building because it is nothing short of amazing. I am in no way trying to undermine that. But a simple ribbon-cutting and perhaps a social in the atrium with punch and cookies would’ve been more than enough to introduce the new building to students and faculty.
Instead, there were lasers, holograms, big bangs and smoke machines. While I don’t know how much the total show cost, I can only imagine it had to be pretty pricey. Add that to the fact that the school hired an outside event planner, despite already having one on our staff, and I’m sure it was somewhere in the thousands price range.
I understand there are different budgets for everything at Bonaventure. I understand that the business building aims to draw in more prospective students. But the fact is the university should be saving money wherever they can. For example, not trying to go above and beyond with a huge, unnecessary pyrotechnic show.
Maybe if we didn’t put on this huge light show, which really didn’t benefit us in any way other than give us something to talk about for a few days, we could put the money spent on it toward other things.
Things like having a graduation ceremony that doesn’t cost the students more money.
Why should students, who already pay $40,000 a year to attend the school, spend an extra $100 at graduation? This fee is on top of the price of cap and gown rental and the Senior Week activity fee.
One of the main reasons for instituting the graduation fee last year was that many other colleges charge for graduation as well. We’re not other colleges. Those colleges have had graduation fees in place for years. Bonaventure decided to spring this on the Class of 2014 after three years of the class believing all they would need to do to attend graduation was work hard and pass their classes.
D’Youville College was one of the universities named that also charges students a fee to graduate. The cost of tuition at D’Youville is $22,480. That’s more than $700 cheaper than it is to attend Bonaventure.
In reality, $100 really isn’t all that much. But when seniors see the university putting on bizarre, holographic light shows, we have a right to be annoyed with where our money is going and why we need to pay an extra fee on top of all the fees that are already in place. We’re graduating in nine months and being shoved out in the real world to find jobs that will help pay off the mountains of student loans we’ve accumulated over the past four years.
We need to penny-pinch wherever we can, and an unnecessary $100 fee and pricey light show for the new business building aren’t helping us.
