More than 220 former University of Otago students are due to walk across the Dunedin Town Hall stage on Saturday for a "special acknowledgement" ceremony after every graduation ceremony planned by the university last year had to be cancelled.
The May and August events were cancelled because of Covid-19 restrictions, and the December ceremonies were not held because of security concerns arising from a threat.
A Graduate Women Otago regalia convener, Walter Lawrence, could be forgiven for being slightly nervous about whether the latest ceremony will go ahead after the last year’s mass cancellations, including the two events, in August and December, when he was serving as one of the two conveners on duty.
"At the moment it looks good," Mr Lawrence said yesterday.
"It’s the new normal," he said of the risk of disruption.
Saturday’s "special acknowledgement" ceremony and its preceding capping procession is distinctive for several reasons.
The procession will be the first of its kind organised by the university since December 2019, and the ceremony is the first graduation-related formal gathering to be held in the town hall since then.
This is also the first graduation-related ceremony to be staged by the university in March, certainly for several decades, and perhaps ever.
And it is the smallest stand-alone graduation-related ceremony organised by the university for more than 20 years.
Asked if other recent Otago graduates who were not going to the Saturday ceremony might also hire regalia and have photographs taken, Mr Lawrence said there were early signs that some "extra" people were hiring regalia, but he believed this would involve only about 20 people.
Otago University registrar Chris Stoddart said that Saturday’s 1pm ceremony would go ahead unless there was an adverse change in alert levels.
This was a "special acknowledgement ceremony" for graduates from last year who previously could not "physically cross the stage" last year, because of the cancellations, and arrangements would be similar to a standard graduation ceremony, Mr Stoddart said.
