Nope, it’s not what you think. It wasn’t pro-Hamas protesters—this time.
We’ve seen anti-Israel protests at several graduations, and we’ve seen commencement ceremonies canceled altogether as some universities bent their knee to the demonstrators—but we haven’t seen this before.
A graduation ceremony for nursing students at Howard University in Washington D.C. was canceled right in the middle of the keynote address Thursday as furious parents who were locked out due to capacity issues pounded on the doors and even smashed a window.
It was a chaotic scene:
The tensions flared because the venue simply wasn’t large enough for all the families who came to watch their loved ones walk the stage. There was at least one injury:
Loved ones of students in the College of Nursing and Allied Health Sciences packed into the Cramton Auditorium in Washington, DC, on Thursday, but not all relatives made it inside the building before the ceremony was abruptly canceled during the keynote address.
Chaotic video footage shows dozens of people standing outside the auditorium chanting “Let us in! Let us in!” as the ceremony began. Pictures showed a glass door had been shattered during the commotion as people banged on the doors and tried to push past security to go inside.
Students, many of whom may have missed their high school graduations in 2020 because of COVID, were heartbroken:
Poor planning.
Maybe locking parents out of the ceremony is standard procedure at HBCUs, because when my daughter graduated from there, several parents with tickets were not allowed entry and trapped in a tight hallway after the ceremony was beginning. It was scary as parents were smushed up together with many of them upset and frantic. It could have easily become dangerous. My son, on the other hand, graduated from a conservative college and it was a well-organized beautiful event.