Posted Feb. 8 at 6:11 p.m.
This year’s spring commencement ceremony will be held in the Diag, University officials announced Friday afternoon.
The decision comes almost exactly one month after University officials announced that the April 26 ceremony would take place at Eastern Michigan University’s Rynearson Stadium rather than Michigan Stadium due to ongoing construction in the Big House.
Following the original announcement, angry calls, e-mails and letters from students and alumni pressured the University to reconsider its decision to move the ceremony off campus.
In response, University officials said they would reexamine the idea of holding commencement at Michigan Stadium. Officials also produced surveys for graduating students in an effort to gauge their priorities and preferences for the ceremony.
After the first round of surveys, though, University officials determined it was too costly and unsafe to hold the ceremony in the Big House. University spokeswoman Kelly Cunningham has said that a lack of electricity and working bathrooms would make a Michigan Stadium ceremony too difficult.
Before today’s decision, the University gave graduating students a second survey to choose between Elbel Field, located on south campus, or the Diag for a commencement venue. Of the 3,002 graduating students who took the survey, 66 percent picked the Diag.