Trinity has apologised for “any undue distress” caused by the mislabelling of a number of virtual graduation ceremonies which resulted in graduates having to watch multiple videos to find their own ceremony.
Several graduates reported confusion and upset after prerecorded graduation ceremonies posted online on Saturday were incorrectly labelled by class, meaning they had to go through multiple videos to find the relevant ceremony.
Speaking to The University Times, Amy McAuley, a history and political science graduate, said the error was “a bit disappointing, because obviously it’s supposed to be a special day, it’s graduation [and] we couldn’t do it in person because of coronavirus obviously”.
“The ceremony was lovely”, McAuley said, “but the fact that they uploaded them wrong – it was a bit like the one thing you have to do”.
“You built up all this excitement and you click on the video and you think, ‘this is great’ and you’re watching it live with your family and your name isn’t coming up.”
College sent an email to graduates two hours after the videos were uploaded which apologised for “any undue distress” caused by the mixup.
“It has come to our attention that the sequencing of your Commencement video to match the descriptions were not correct”, the email said. “We apologies [sic] sincerely for this.”
Speaking to The University Times, Helena Davies, a history graduate, said her class had organised a group call for after the ceremony, but after the mixup, “the sense of ceremony had kind of fallen away”.
“Everyone had kind of sent it off to family members”, Davies said. “We eventually found history in the Bachelor of Engineering with Management graduation video.”
“It was difficult if you had family members in a different place trying to access it and trying to watch it … you’re phoning your sister who’s in London like ‘skip forward to 14 minutes and then you’ll see me.”
Trinity’s class of 2020 have been given the option to graduate in person at a later date, but have not yet been told when in-person ceremonies will begin again.
Michael Coyle, a botanical sciences graduate, told The University Times that while he was not upset by the mistake, he and his class found it “almost comedic”.
“It was the one main thing that we were all hyped about”, he said. “Our group chat was just on fire. Some people in my class had gotten the gowns sent in, they got the hats sent in just to make the occasion of it, and then all at once all hell broke loose [in the group chat].”
“But I think it was a genuine honest mistake”, Coyle added.
