Preparing for Joy

Reading Time: 7 minutes

When I graduated from LMU in the 1990s, sitting in Sunken Garden with my best friends, professors, family, and future spouse nearby, I had absolutely no idea what kind of adventure I was stepping into.

At that age, commencement feels enormous. You know you are experiencing a life milestone. You know your family is emotional. You know everyone suddenly wants photos in very specific places around campus, and now I feel old realizing none of those photos were taken with smartphones or even digital cameras. You know the gown is warmer than expected.

But I did not yet fully appreciate what commencement really signifies.

Life commences.

Back then, commencement faced Regents Terrace and Alumni Mall, with our backs to Sacred Heart Chapel. Years later, the university wisely flipped the orientation so graduates now face the defining symbol and spiritual anchor of LMU throughout the ceremony. The chapel belongs at the center of the experience. It reminds us that commencement is not simply a production or a tradition. At its best, it is a moment of gratitude, reflection, hope, and sending forth.

And this weekend, once again, the bluff comes alive for that moment.

While there are many meaningful moments throughout the academic year, nothing quite compares to Commencement Weekend. Anyone fortunate enough to work in higher education understands this feeling. The joy, the relief, the pride, the emotion, the sense of shared accomplishment and connection across an entire university community. It is the reason many of us do this work in the first place.

This year marks the first time in LMU’s history that all three commencement ceremonies on the Westchester campus will take place in a single weekend: undergraduate commencement on Saturday, graduate commencement on Sunday morning, and LMU Loyola Law School commencement on Sunday afternoon, all beginning with Commencement Mass on Friday evening.

For the university, commencement weekend is both deeply personal and operationally enormous. It is our Super Bowl. Months of planning suddenly become visible all at once.

Or perhaps more accurately: if the planning works well, it becomes almost invisible.

That is the strange magic of university operations. When things are functioning properly, people simply experience joy.

And that is really what we are preparing for.

The Weekend Begins

Earlier today, I was walking through Sunken Garden and around campus while crews finalized setup and commencement rehearsals unfolded nearby. Faculty regalia began appearing. Radios crackled. Stage crews adjusted lighting and sightlines. Golf carts moved briskly between venues. Music drifted through the air.

There is a particular feeling that settles onto campus during commencement weekend. The stress of finals and move-out slowly gives way to anticipation. In some ways, it feels a bit like preparing your home for guests, just on a much larger scale. Lawns are freshly mowed. Walkways are swept, and then swept again. Is someone making an emergency ice run? Probably. We have that covered too.

Families begin arriving from around the country and around the world. Local hotels fill. Restaurants throughout the area overflow with LMU celebrations. Parents start texting photos before they even reach campus. Students begin taking “one last” pictures in places they walked past a thousand times without noticing.

And suddenly, the bluff begins collecting memory again.

One of my favorite parts of commencement weekend remains Commencement Mass on Friday evening.

Many alumni of a certain era still instinctively call it Baccalaureate Mass. Old habits die hard.

But there is something uniquely grounding about gathering together in liturgy, music, ritual, and reflection before the larger public celebrations begin. As the sun lowers over the bluff and the community gathers on Lawton Plaza and Drollinger Stage. There is a feeling that is difficult to describe unless you have experienced it yourself.

Joy, certainly.

But also gratitude.

And maybe a little awe.

The evening always concludes with families gathering around their graduates, arms draped across shoulders, offering blessings and prayers before sending them into the world to live lives of meaning, purpose, and impact. It is one of the most quietly beautiful moments of the entire weekend.

This year’s Mass also marks a meaningful moment for outgoing Jesuit Rector Fr. Eddie Siebert, SJ, whose warmth, pastoral presence, humor, and leadership helped shape an important chapter in LMU’s spiritual life. I am deeply grateful for his friendship and ministry, and I know many members of the LMU community feel the same way as we also welcome incoming Rector José Badenes, S.J.

Commencement by the Numbers

Of course, joy at a university scale requires a surprising amount of infrastructure.

A few quick commencement facts:

Equipment & Setup

• 18,770 chairs
• 1,110 bike racks
• 500 fencing segments
• 340 artificial hedges
• 421 tables
• A brand-new commencement stage system makes its debut this year
• An Emergency Operations Center activated throughout the weekend
• Each ceremony features 9 confetti cannons. Each cannon holds 8 pounds of confetti — or about 16,000 pieces. You do the math for the weekend.

Volunteers and Support Personnel

• 258 student service organization volunteers
• 25 student workers
• 85 University Events student crew members
• Hundreds of university employees, safety personnel, public agency representatives, medical support staff, and traffic management personnel working both on and off campus

Hospitality

• 80 Aramark catering orders supporting 66 events
• 770 linens
• 4,000 bottles of water
• 1,050 gallons of lemonade; 120 gallons of coffee
• 16,000 LMU cookies

There is also extensive coordination happening behind the scenes involving traffic management, accessibility, livestreaming, guest movement, parking, hospitality, emergency planning, and event operations extending well beyond campus itself. In any given year, between 6,000 and 10,000 family members and friends also watch commencement remotely via livestream.

And yes, we time everything.

Even diploma covers.

This year, graduates will receive their diploma covers as they return to their seats rather than directly on stage. It sounds minor, but when multiplied across thousands of graduates, it meaningfully improves the pace and comfort of the ceremony while fully preserving the moment itself. Graduates still hear their names announced, cross the stage, shake hands, and take their photos.

We are simply trying to steward everyone’s time thoughtfully while preserving the experience families came to celebrate.

This requires a level of crowd management precision that starts to resemble Disneyland.

The Bluff Keeps Its Memory

Over the decades, commencement on the bluff has welcomed presidents, heads of state, astronauts, artists, activists, scholars, filmmakers, athletes, business leaders, scientists, and some of the most recognized voices in public life. Through honorary degrees and commencement addresses, LMU has invited people whose lives reflected leadership, creativity, service, courage, faith, intellectual curiosity, and the pursuit of the common good.

This year, we are delighted to welcome an extraordinary group of commencement speakers to the bluff: Venus Williams for undergraduate commencement, Ben Sherwood for graduate commencement, and Judge Anthony Devos Johnstone for LMU Loyola Law School commencement. Each brings a unique story, perspective, and body of work that reflects the values, resilience, excellence, and sense of purpose we hope our graduates carry into the world.

But even with all of that distinction on stage, the center of commencement has always remained remarkably consistent:

Our graduates.

Recently, I came across one of my favorite historic LMU commencement photos, a remarkable image from the university’s 1930 commencement ceremony near Xavier Hall. Nearly a century later, the clothing has changed. The campus has changed. The scale of commencement has changed dramatically.

But the faces have not changed very much at all.

You still see the same joy.
The same pride.
The same uncertainty.
The same relief.
The same excitement about what comes next.

That is one of the beautiful things about commencement. Every generation believes they are stepping into a completely different world than the generation before them.

And they are.

But they are also participating in something timeless.

That moment when a student becomes an alum.
That moment when families exhale.
That moment when possibility feels very real.

The bluff remembers all of it.

Congratulations, Class of 2026.

We cannot wait to celebrate you.

Once a Lion. Always a Lion.

—John

P.S. One of my favorite newer LMU traditions is watching graduates and families gather around the Spirit Mark on the bluff for photos throughout commencement weekend. While looking at that 1930 commencement image recently, I realized something: long before the Spirit Mark existed, students were already instinctively doing the very same thing, gathering together to preserve the feeling of the day before it slipped away. Different generation. Same instinct.