Olivia Goldberg / The Citizen

Story:

AURORA -- With luck, the sun will gleam along Cayuga Lake as 88 Wells College seniors accept their degrees behind the Aurora Inn May 27. Perhaps blue skies can assuage the sorrow some students now hold about the change in venue for the upcoming commencement.

Graduation traditions past saw seniors ride a horse-drawn Wells Fargo stagecoach around the traffic circle on campus -- a vanguard to the conferring of degrees against the backdrop of Macmillan Hall's giant white pillars and flagstone steps. But now that stagecoach will have to take students to the center of downtown Aurora.

Construction of a 45,000-square-foot science center in front of Macmillan -- a Roosevelt-era building -- is bringing a change of plans to a custom students past and present held dear. Work around the new science center currently sees a wide swath of the area around Macmillan and nearby parking lots fenced off, as large machines break up the earth.

"It is rather sad to have to experience a watered down version of a historical tradition," said junior BethAnne Nelson in a recent article in The Citizen.

"I'm rather furious. Tradition was such a huge part of the character of the school and made it such the interesting charming place to go," complained an alumna on the Web site Runningscared.com.

Senior Aliyah Brandt said many students had hard feelings about the change, and that she could sympathize with her schoolmates' frustrations.

"They wanted to have a traditional graduation like classes before us. It's a beautiful place, with the pillars, the steps," Brandt said.

For more on this story, read Tuesday's edition of The Citizen