The University of Arizona - Where the weather is hot, the livin' is easy, and parents attending commencement exercises will be frisked at the door for contraband tortillas:
There will be no universitywide commencement ceremony for undergraduates at the UA this December, over the strong objection of student and alumni groups. UA Student Body President Alistair Chapman said he believes the underlying motivation is tortillas, which - when spinning through the air at commencement - have confounded the administration and drawn protesters in recent years.
Instead, graduating seniors will receive their diplomas at convocations hosted by their individual colleges, University of Arizona officials formally announced Wednesday. The UA conferred about 3,700 degrees last December, and about half of the recipients attended the campuswide ceremony...
UA President Peter Likins, who made the final decision, could not be reached for comment...Likins had warned in May 2003 that he would consider canceling the campuswide commencement if tortillas continue to be tossed.
"Unless our peculiar practice of throwing tortillas ceases, we may be obliged to cancel future all-university commencement ceremonies, leaving our graduation celebrations to the individual colleges," Likins wrote.
The tortillas continued to fly. But Chapman said a video from the May 2004 commencement showed most of the tortillas were thrown from the audience. He said he believes security at the doors, similar to that at basketball games, would eliminate that problem and is needed anyway for a crowd of 14,000.
Emphasis mine. I can't think of any way to interpret that, other than, if they held one campus-wide commencement ceremony, the rent-a-cops would be forced to shake people down in search of...tortillas. So perhaps it's best to hold smaller ceremonies.
Posted by kswygert at September 9, 2004 07:52 PM