Thousands of feet bustling and swarming cheers fill the stadium — this is a typical day on Third and King Street. In May, it isn’t a foreign concept for Oracle Park to be populated with baseball fans dressed in orange and black to watch the San Francisco Giants play. However, since 2015, there’s one day during baseball season where the stadium is packed with a different crowd.

Graduates in matching regalia form a sea of purple in the lower level of the stands, while proud family members scan through from the upper deck, looking for their graduate.

For a decade, Oracle has been the home of SF State’s commencement ceremony. But with the school facing an ongoing budget crisis, an enrollment decline and a student-led petition asking the university to “fix” the commencement ceremony, how much longer will the ceremony be held at Oracle?

According to Nicole Lange, associate vice president of Alumni Relations and University Engagement (who works with Xpress to help coordinate the distribution of the magazine’s graduation issue at the ceremony), the cost of last year’s commencement ceremony was roughly $803,000 — a number that’s consistent with overall historical costs and reflects current inflation.

“Since 2015 costs for the ceremony — like everything — have been increasing steadily. The program and ceremony are evaluated and updated regularly to eliminate anything deemed nonessential,” stated Lange in an email. “Through careful budgeting and a strong partnership with Oracle Park, we are projecting expenses for the 2026 ceremony to remain stable.”

Holding a commencement ceremony at a professional baseball stadium isn’t cheap — and the cost goes far beyond renting the space.

Much of the near-million-dollar cost covers security, guest services, custodial crews, audiovisual production and staff, needed to run the scoreboard and media systems. Additional expenses include: permits, traffic control, on-site medical services and field preparation. 

Real-time captioning, sign language interpreters, Americans with Disabilities Act shuttles, wheelchair-accessible seating and staffing, from SF State’s Disability Programs and Resource Center, also account for a significant portion of the budget.

After last year’s ceremony, Marin Mason, a creative writing student, petitioned for SF State to change the venue, through Instagram, under the name @fixourcommencementsfsu. The petition points out that graduates are only seen on one quadrant of a four-way split jumbotron without having their names read.

“In my first year of undergrad at SFSU, I had quite a few classes with seniors, and I heard a few conversations of them complaining about the way commencement was run,” wrote Mason in a text message. “They said things like, ‘They don’t even say our names!’ and ‘Last year’s commencement was over four hours long!’ and ‘Why are they shoving 7,000 graduates into one ceremony, why aren’t they splitting it up?’ I started the petition so that we can consider what students want.”

For Johnny Castaneda, a cinema student, graduating at Oracle provides a beautiful view and a pretty venue but Castaneda agrees with Mason that the ceremony isn’t as intimate without student’s names being read.

“It feels a little bit like a waste of money,” Castaneda said about graduation expenses. “But I feel like it’s one of those opportunities that you can’t afford to pass up because it’s what we have.”

After Mason attended her best friend’s graduation at UC Merced, the contrast between how SF State handles commencement compared to other schools was evident.

UC Merced’s commencement ceremonies are held in Fall and Spring and split amongst their schools of Engineering, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts. They’re held on UC Merced’s Recreation Field or Art Kamangar Center at the Merced Theatre. 

“Not going to lie, I was a little jealous, because I knew that myself and my classmates weren’t gonna have the same satisfying ceremony,” said Mason.

At SF State, aside from the commencement ceremony held at Oracle, graduations are divided by department rather than the university’s seven colleges, which remains the only opportunity for students to have their names read.

Luis De Paz Fernandez, SF State’s chief of staff, said the university has explored alternative venues to compare the cost and potential savings of switching venues. Venues under consideration include the Chase Center, Kezar Stadium, War Memorial Gym (University of San Francisco) and Cox Stadium (SF State).

“From general comparisons, there is not a more affordable option that would provide the level of amenities like Oracle,” De Paz Fernandez stated in an email. “Other venues would also significantly impact on the number of guest tickets graduates would receive.”

For Mason, cost should not outweigh experience: “I’d rather be recognized in a timely manner then have it at this big expensive stadium. The priority should be splitting up the ceremonies so that everyone can get their name called and the ceremony is a reasonable length.”

Even splitting the ceremony into multiple events, which would be necessary at a smaller venue, would come with downsides. De Paz Fernandez said it still would not guarantee that graduates’ names could be read during the ceremony.

Reading the names of the approximately 4,300 graduates this year would take more than five hours of an already multi-hour long ceremony.

“I feel like this school should be accommodating more towards us and making it more convenient for our day,” said cinema student Maxwell Gottlieb, when speaking about his experience going to his friend’s graduation. “We paid so much fucking money for tuition, meal plans, housing and I’m like, ‘you can’t even give me the simplest favor of doing that, you know.’”

Although potential changes have been explored, the venue itself is not expected to change. De Paz Fernandez said it is his understanding that Oracle will continue to host commencement through 2027 at the least — planning for commencement must begin no less than a year in advance to consider contracts with venues and vendors.

As Mason sees it, the solution is simple.

“The focus needs to be the students, and not showing off the city of San Francisco. It is about the students and their families,” stated Mason. “Don’t flaunt the money or the city, flaunt the students.”