Graduation Ceremony Abandoned, Angered Families Cause Chaos Outside

It’s good to see that, as summer break approaches, the situation on our nation’s college campuses in blue cities maintains the same grim status quo as we’ve come to expect over the past few months.

This time, it’s neither students chanting “death to America” or demanding the abolition of Israel, nor is it the usual malaise associated with elevated crime in Democrat-run metropolises — homelessness, “bail reform,” defunding the police or anything like that. Instead, it’s a kind of meeting of the two; call it a new form of intersectionality.

At Howard University in Washington, D.C., the graduation ceremony for students in the College of Nursing and Allied Health Sciences was canceled during the keynote speech on Thursday night as angry relatives who were unable to make it into the packed Cramton Auditorium began demanding entry.

One was hurt as windows were smashed and relatives screamed at officials to let them into the building.

Video from what appears to be the lobby shows at least one glass window that’s been shattered in the fracas:

1 hurt in chaos after Howard University nursing graduation ceremony reaches maximum capacity 📹: @Dream_Girl_MG https://t.co/BEL54p8OVJ pic.twitter.com/v82nASe5b9

— Allison Papson (@AllisonPapson) May 10, 2024

According to the New York Post, those attempting to get into the historically black university‘s ceremony in the nation’s capital “pounded on the doors and smashed a window after being locked out when the auditorium hit capacity,” all while chanting “let us in!”

The chaos had gone on for some time, one student told Washington’s WRC-TV.

“While they were doing the keynote speaker, there was, like, loud banging, even before that, for like 10 minutes straight,” graduate Bria Flowers told the station. “Just like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.”

“Glass started getting broken,” graduate Halle Ragoonanan said. “One of my classmate’s hands got cut.”

“I’m confused why it got so crazy, how it got so quick, so bad so fast,” graduate Kiana Hamilton told WRC.

That’s when someone — it’s unclear who — moved in to stop the ceremony.

The school said it was the fire department. The fire department said it was not.

“Because of the size of the room and because our relatives sometimes do not know how to act, the fire department is now here to shut us down,” Dr. Gina S. Brown, dean of Howard’s College of Nursing and Allied Health Sciences, told the audience in a WRC video of the event.

This mother’s day weekend Howard University shutdown graduation and blamed the families instead of taking accountability for poor planning. What did you expect when you have the largest graduating class and no headcount limit per graduate. Let them walk at commencement! pic.twitter.com/PipTkmr7D1

— Dee (@darling_daphney) May 10, 2024

The school also said in a statement that the glass breaking was not intentional.

“During the ceremony, a visitor who was not able to enter the facility, which had reached capacity, leaned on the front door, unintentionally applying pressure to a pane causing it to break, the statement said.

“This incident led to a disturbance among guests outside of the facility, resulting in a disruption of the program taking place inside. Guests in attendance were immediately dispersed following this incident.”

However, Washington’s fire department said it wasn’t responsible for the shutdown, putting the onus on the school.

“D.C. Fire and EMS did not shut down tonight’s event,” the fire department said in a statement, according to WRC.

“At 6:42 p.m., we responded to the Cramton Auditorium for a medical local at the request of campus police. The patient was evaluated and refused transport, and D.C. Fire and EMS departed.”

Whatever the case, graduates weren’t happy.

“I didn’t even get to walk,” Ragoonanan told WRC. “I didn’t get to walk. I graduated magna cum laude and I didn’t even get to walk. I’m the class of 2020. I didn’t get to walk for my high school graduation and I didn’t get to walk for my college graduation.”

“All the money we spent,” another graduate told WRC. “My father and grandmother came down from North Carolina.”

While some of the students got to walk in the main commencement ceremony on Friday, it was still a blow for those who had invested tens of thousands, if not more, in a degree — only to have a special moment robbed for them by the violent behavior of others.

You’ll notice one word hasn’t been used yet in this report, and it wasn’t used by the Post or WRC: arrests. Before or after the dispersal, nobody seems to have been arrested for disrupting the ceremony or for causing the window damage that led to a student’s laceration.

The only talk of individuals facing any sort of punishment, in fact, came from WTTG-TV, which reported that two visitors were escorted out of the arena before the ceremony began because of a dispute. Again, no mention of arrests, however.

All this comes after four years of signaling by the establishment media and Democratic politicians that “fiery but mostly peaceful” protests are OK by progressives.

If you want to find a common denominator between this, regular violence in blue cities and the current chaos on college campuses, it’s the lack of accountability.

When so many progressive jurisdictions have defined down crime or what it takes to keep someone behind bars for it, there are invariably going to be people who commit more pernicious offenses. On college campuses, meanwhile, unchecked barbarism and bigotry against Jewish students and faculty has become a fact of life.

In fact, what the country saw at Howard was relatively mild compared to the worst symptoms of the malaise.

But make no mistake: It remains a symptom nonetheless, and a troubling one at that. And the only people who’ll be punished for it are the graduates and the relatives who followed the rules.