Tram Nguyen
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“You make us proud,” so “have a safe commencement” and “please celebrate responsibly.”
These messages will be spread across campus and downtown starting June 2 as part of the responsible drinking campaign put together by the San Luis Obispo Downtown Association and Cal Poly.
“We talked a lot about what kind of messages and what kind of images, and really try to make it positive, really congratulatory,” said Clare O’Brien, associate vice president for Student Affairs.
Though the chosen messages do not contain any alcohol-related language, O’Brien said students understand the point.
Cal Poly’s Student Affairs office had a student graphic designer create a poster with those messages. The poster will be seen on buildings’ walls on campus and businesses’ windows downtown. It will also be shown on TV screens in the University Union, the Cal Poly website and the commencement website.
The posters will be placed in the downtown area after a recent controversy over whether bars should open for a traditional pre-commencement pub crawl by graduates and their families. The bars chose to open despite Cal Poly and Mayor Jan Marx’s request that they stay closed the morning of graduation, but agreed to work as part of an educational safety campaign targeted at graduating seniors.
Along with that, the Student Affairs office also asked the Peers Understanding Listening Supporting Educating (PULSE) team of the Health Center to create a 45-second video about “a responsible and dignified graduation,” PULSE health educator Theresa Fagouri said.
The video features seniors stating their opinions on how they want their graduation to be.
“I think the video speaks to everyone who’s graduating,” Fagouri said, “who’s knowing family will be in the audience (and knowing) there are their loved ones who supported them through this journey of college.”
For civil engineering senior Itai Axelrad, drinking before the commencement is a tradition and “what everyone does around here,” so “it’s hard to say no to.”
At the same time, drinking after commencement is also appealing, Axelrad said.
“Drinking after, I think it’s a formal graduating, which is a pretty exciting thing,” Axelrad said. “And I’d say that everyone’s 21. It’s playful and as long as you’re safe about it, I have no problem with it.”
O’Brien said the commencement this year will include a new pinning ceremony, a nationally recognized speaker, a multimedia retrospective display of photos submitted by seniors and “an amazing big finish” that O’Brien would like to keep secret.
“We’re so excited about the commencement,” O’Brien said. “Because this year, we’ve done some great improvements and expansion to the commencement ceremony, which is going to be wonderful.”