17-05-2025
More than 2,400 graduates participate in CSU's first campus-wide commencement in 27 years
More than 2,000 mortarboards were tossed into the air May 16 as the cannon fired at Colorado State University's Canvas Stadium.
Then, the 2,418 graduates began high-fiving and hugging one another as they posed for pictures and waved to family and friends in the stands.
'It was enjoyable,' said master's degree recipient Brendan Kelley, as he filed off the field afterward. 'I think it's important to recognize everyone at CSU that graduates. I think it's really fun to have everyone together.'
That was the big draw for many of the participants. Although CSU still held its usual recognition ceremonies by college and major – there are 37 scheduled from May 15-18 – where individual students' names were read as they walked across the stage.
The university-wide ceremony at Canvas Stadium, with about 12,000 family members and friends in the stands in a ticketed-only event, gave those same graduates the chance to celebrate en masse. Nearly half of the 5,000 graduates eligible to participate in the all-campus event chose to do so. Officials delayed the start by about 10 minutes because of traffic delays that were slowing guests' arrival.
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'I say I'm proud to be a CSU Ram,' they chanted at the urging of the featured speaker, Eugene Daniels, a former CSU football player and MSNBC's senior Washington correspondent. They all held up their hands, clinching their middle fingers tight while curling the outer ones to form the CSU Rams' horn symbol popularized at the school's sporting events, when Vice Provost Michelle Stanley asked them to as she took a selfie from the stage.
There were loud cheers at multiple points throughout the 80-minute ceremony, creating the same kind of game-day atmosphere inside the on campus-stadium that opened in 2017 that there had been outside in the hours leading up to it. It was sunny and warm, but not too hot. A beautiful spring day in Fort Collins, several graduates said.
"It's fun to see everyone in one place and see how big our school actually is," said Rachel Ross, who was receiving a bachelor's degree in theater. "The weather's nice, and I'm excited to be here."
CSU hadn't held a university-wide commencement ceremony since the spring of 1998, when graduates gathered at the former Hughes Stadium, 3 miles west of campus below Horsetooth Reservoir.
Students, wearing robes in black, green and gold – the green and gold were to recognize those graduating with honors – along with hoods and stoles of various colors were walking around campus with friends and family a good two hours before their scheduled 4 p.m. processional into the stadium. International students, many of them receiving master's and doctorate degrees, also wore stoles with the colors of their national flags.
Cesar Reyes was standing in the shade with his wife, Fernanda Luna, before getting in line with the other graduates for the processional. He was wearing a pink hood, as a master's degree recipient in music, and a stole with an orange, white and green stripe, like the flag of his native Mexico.
'This is the first graduation event I have ever attended, because when I graduated from the conservatory in Morelia (Mexico, where he earned his bachelor's degree), they don't do such big things,' said Reyes, a violinist who had to leave early to get to a dress rehearsal later that night with the Boulder Symphony.
CSU President Amy Parsons spoke of the important role journalists occupy in a democracy while introducing Daniels, who earned his bachelor's degree in journalism and technical communication in 2012. And Daniels spoke of the difficulties he had breaking into TV broadcasting as a man who is gay and Black, noting that he was able to persevere and now has his own weekly network TV show on politics. And he was recently elected, by his peers, as president of the White House Correspondents' Association.
'So, remember, Class of 2025, you are not the next generation of leaders starting at some vague point in the future; you're leadership starts now,' Daniels said. 'You are the ones who have the power to hurt or to help. You are going to take the reins of this world, and you will be guiding us. The question is where will we go together?'
Loud cheers also went up when Kim Jordan, co-founder of New Belgium Brewing and a member of the CSU System Board of Governors for eight years, received an honorary doctorate of Humane Letters.
And toward the end of the ceremony when Kristi Bohlender, CSU's senior associate vice president for advancement and executive director of the alumni association, reminded the graduates that they were the newest members of a worldwide CSU alumni base of more than 265,000 members.
A few minutes later, they flipped the tassels on their mortarboards in the customary fashion of graduation ceremonies. And most then tossed those mortarboards high into the air as the historic 'Comatose' cannon was fired.
They danced as the CSU fight song was played, then filed out of the stadium as 'Don't You Forget About Me' by Simple Minds played on the public address system.
'It's really exciting that we're all doing this together with our friends who have other majors,' said Zander Cohn, who was graduating with a bachelor's degree in health and exercise science.
Reporter Kelly Lyell covers education, breaking news, some sports and other topics of interest for the Coloradoan. Contact him at kellylyell@ and
This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: More than 2,400 CSU graduates celebrate in university-wide ceremony
