Senior Devan Carr spent his first two years at USF St. Petersburg before transferring to the Tampa campus with his associate degree. He decided to finish his degree at Tampa due to the larger class selection available for his major in Psychology.
He is now set to graduate this December, and to his dismay he will be graduating at the Sun Dome with thousands of other grads he doesn’t know.
Even after transferring to his new home campus, Carr continued to take roughly half of his classes at USFSP. He told The Crow’s Nest that he physically likes the St. Petersburg campus better and has more friends here.
Carr made a few attempts for approval to graduate from USFSP on Dec. 16, but his attempts were shot down. He was hoping to enjoy his graduation with all of his friends.
“I personally don’t even really want to go to graduation at the Sun Dome. The only reason I am going is for my parents,” Carr said.
Carr had met with administration at the St. Petersburg campus before applying for graduation. He was told then he wouldn’t be allowed to be part of the commencement at Mahaffey Theater because “it was against policy.”
However, when he went to apply for graduation online earlier this year, he was prompted with the option to choose which campus he wanted to graduate from.
According to Carr, he received an email from the director of commencement at USFSP, Yoli Lanuza, which informed him that his request had been denied and he would not be able to graduate from the St. Petersburg campus.
“On the website, the official form to fill out for graduation let me choose,” Carr said. “So I figured I had a case to make, but apparently not.”
Carr also contacted the commencement coordinators at Tampa, who he said were a little more sympathetic.
“I really didn’t even get a straight answer from the people in St. Pete,” Carr said. “I got more of a straight answer from the people in Tampa.”
The assistant commencement coordinator at Tampa, Mary Dooley, told Carr the main issue USFSP is faced with at their ceremony is the limited seating at Mahaffey Theater, which can seat up to 2,031 people.
Han Reichgelt, USFSP’s regional vice chancellor of academic affairs, told The Crow’s Nest that the denial did not occur due to a spacing issue.
“It is important to remember that USF St. Pete is not a campus of USF Tampa; we are a separately accredited university,” Reichgelt said. “No university will allow students who receive their degree from another institution to participate in their graduation ceremony.”
Of the list of options online, students are only able to graduate from their current home campus.
The only time the commencement ceremony changes is over the summer when the USF system combines graduations at Tampa Sun Dome, according to Reichgelt.
