By John Mugol/Triton’s Call staff

An expected increase in the graduation rate has prompted the UOG Graduation Committee to reduce the number of guests that students can invite to commencement.

“Previous graduations, we had to stop people at the gate (if reached to capacity),” said Michael A. Griffin, Ed.D., associate professor and co-chairperson of the University of Guam Graduation Committee.

In the Spring 2015 commencement ceremonies UOG issued tickets for entry. Each graduate was issued nine official tickets. Those without tickets are not granted access.

This implementation has not been practiced at the university since the early 90’s.

“During that time, ceremonies were comprised of students from both fall and spring semester,” Griffin said. This made the ceremonies longer and over the capacity.

The Spring 2015 graduates comprised of 294 students that showed up to the commencement. Compared to the Spring 2014 commencement number of 265 graduates. On the other hand, the Fall commencements had 197 graduates for the Fall 2014 semester and 184 graduates for the Fall 2013 semester.

“The reason why we issued tickets was the number of graduates,” Griffin said.

For the Fall semester graduates, Griffin said he doesn’t expect the committee to give entry tickets for that semester. However, for the Spring semester graduates, it is likely tickets will be given out again.

The reason for that was because some colleges graduate their students in the spring semester such as the School of Nursing. The cohorts of nursing and social work confer their degrees during that semester. This makes the number of graduates higher than the fall semester commencement ceremonies.

UOG also confers the graduate schools so there are times when the number of these students would be graduated.

With the renovations completed within the Calvo Fieldhouse, Griffin expects the capacity to minimize.