Dear faculty and staff,
Since spring commencement would have occurred this Saturday, May 16, we did not want the moment to pass without offering you the chance to tell the UC Berkeley Class of 2020 how proud of them you are. Participating is simple.
-
Wear blue and gold.
-
Take a selfie or shoot a short video stating your affiliation to Berkeley and congratulating the Class of 2020 on their extraordinary accomplishments.
-
Post it on social media with the hashtag #CalGrad, or upload it directly to https://commencement.berkeley.edu/cal-grad-day anytime this weekend.
While the students in the Class of 2020 have faced many challenges during their time on campus, I have been incredibly impressed by their ability to navigate uncertainty and remain resilient. As faculty and staff, you have served as their teachers, mentors, coaches, healthcare providers, and more. Thank you for coming together with the whole Cal family to give our graduates a virtual Golden Bear sendoff.
I also invite you to watch a very exciting — and non-traditional — unofficial virtual commencement ceremony this Saturday at 2 p.m.
After we closed UC Berkeley to non-essential activities, more than one hundred students and alumni decided to rebuild the entire campus in Minecraft, a video game in which players create virtual environments with building blocks. On Saturday, we are hosting a mock graduation in “Blockeley University” — as the virtual campus is known — complete with speeches from myself and others, a conferral of degrees, and other aspects of a traditional commencement ceremony. Visit Blockeley.com for information, or watch the event live on Twitch
What began as a way for a group of students to cope with missing our campus has brought together thousands of members of our community and solved a heartbreaking problem: how to preserve the time-honored tradition of graduating from the world’s top public university. I hope you will join in.
This message has been sent to all UC Berkeley faculty and staff.
If you are a manager who supervises UC Berkeley employees without email access, please circulate this information to all.
