At Boise State University’s recent commencement, a seemingly new tradition took center stage, though it felt disconnected from the singular purpose of the day: celebrating the hard-won achievements of our graduates. Just after the singing of our national anthem, a moment of shared pride, the ceremony shifted into an administration-led ‘land acknowledgement.’ This is now the second consecutive commencement season where Boise State has featured such a statement.

The transition was jarring. One moment, families were standing together in collective celebration; the next, the ceremony pivoted to a scripted institutional message that had nothing to do with the students crossing the stage.

Commencement should be a moment of strict institutional neutrality where the only agenda is honoring the success of the graduates. For a single morning, the university’s priorities, politics, and programs should step aside. The day belongs to the students.

A land acknowledgement, whatever one thinks of it, is not a neutral act. It is a substantive statement with a particular historical and political framing that many in the audience, families who traveled from across Idaho and beyond, may find meaningful, alienating, or simply beside the point. That range of reactions is precisely why commencement is the wrong venue. When an institution addresses a captive audience of thousands who have gathered for one specific purpose, it should resist the temptation to use that platform for anything else.

This isn’t an argument about the validity of history or the merits of the acknowledgement, but the venue of its delivery. Many universities incorporate them into orientations, departmental events, or cultural programming; contexts where the audience has opted in and where dialogue is at least possible. Ideally, these topics should find a home in the classroom, where students can ask questions, push back, and genuinely grapple with complicated history. A commencement ceremony offers none of that. It offers only a captive audience and a microphone.

Ultimately, commencement is the finish line. It should be the one day where the focus remains exclusively, and without apology, on the graduates (the future engineers, nurses, and teachers of Idaho) and the families who supported them. These graduates earned a ceremony that honors their merit, not a platform to promote an ideology that competes for the spotlight.

Forcing a land acknowledgement into a commencement ceremony is a disservice to the occasion, the families in attendance, and most importantly, the class of 2026.

Garrett A. McBrayer, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Finance in the College of Business and Economics at Boise State University.