When you pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to go to law school, you should expect to be confronted with questions throughout the process. There are the obvious “what is subject matter jurisdiction again?”-esque questions, but those aren’t the ones that keep you up at night. The big questions tend to be more existential: What’s the point of all this? Am I just wasting my time? Who even cares if I finish this degree or not? And it isn’t just you wondering those things. That one guy who bombed his cold call in Crim Law, the nerds chasing extracurricular clout on trial team, they want to have a moment that makes it plainly obvious that their hard work mattered and will matter to others. Graduation ceremonies can offer that much-needed confirmation.
You probably remember bits of yours: the dean or your favorite professor calling your name on stage and some quirky celebrity they managed to opine about how bright your future is. But the part that mattered the most for many were the people in the audience. Friends, family, the support system that got you to this part of the rest of your life. And they travel far to be there. My mom traveled ~800 miles to show up to my graduation at WashU, but that’s a short walk compared to the international flights my cohort members’ families flew to celebrate all of their hard work.
Schools tend to honor the importance of the celebration. This year’s class of graduating Georgetown students were looking forward to their Graduation Gala and small accessible ceremonies that grouped graduates with their 1L sections. But this year, the school is planning major cuts to the program and the students are understandably pissed off. Georgetown Voice has the story:
In the weeks leading up to commencement, what should feel like the proud finish line for Georgetown Law’s Class of 2026 has felt more like a fight.
The Law Center sent out an email announcing changes to its May graduation ceremony on Dec. 23, 2025, which involved the cancellation of small cohort ceremonies on the Capitol Campus. The beloved Graduation Gala was also cancelled, though most students were unaware that this decision occurred. This change disrupted months of planning and, for many students, was a disappointment after years of anticipation.
In response, students are planning to boycott the ceremony and skip it all together. Met with that reality, the dean told them that skipping graduation “would be a shame for them,’ not for the school, for them[.]”’
Way to cut off a generation of potential future donors, dean!
The school intends to have the graduation ceremony at the historic Hilltop Campus. While that is part of the school’s pre-COVID tradition, that part of campus is less accessible than other parts of campus that could host the ceremony like the Eleanor Holmes Norton Green on the Capitol Campus. Ceremonies were held there as part of a temporary change, but sometimes the new thing is better than the old one. And considering that the student petition against the announced changes has about 800 student, faculty, and familial signatures, the university could have done a better job of incorporating feedback. Instead, the school plans to go with an outdoor, 5+ hour ceremony with limited shaded seating that will lump everyone together, and an AI program that will read out the graduates’ names. And the Gala? It was replaced by a happy hour in one of the buildings that hosts classes. Students should be able to expect more from one of the most expensive law schools in the nation.
You can read a student voice their frustrations in their own words on the next page.
Georgetown Law’s Class Of 2026 Pushes Back Against Commencement Changes [Georgetown Voice]
Earlier: Georgetown LLMs Bent Out Of Shape Over Graduation
Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s . He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boat builder who is learning to swim and is interested in rhetoric, Spinozists and humor. Getting back in to cycling wouldn’t hurt either. You can reach him by email at [email protected] and by Tweet/Bluesky at @WritesForRent.
