Graduating senior Brock Giarrusso poses with Dr. Claire Proccopio after being pinned at the Colloquium Ceremony. The graduating seniors presented their papers and were celebrated on the ceremony.

The department of language and communication and the National Organizational Communication Association held the “Senior Colloquium” for graduating undergraduates.

The ceremony was conducted on Tuesday, Nov. 28. 27 undergraduate students received their farewell, presented and defended their papers

The ceremony was officially set to start at 5:30 p.m., but the venue, D Vickers Hall, was already populated with the students and their well-wishers at 4:30 p.m. The ceremony commenced when Department Head of Language and Communication Dr. Lucia Harrison explained how the ceremony would take place and then went on to thank and recognize the department and everyone who helped put the ceremony together in her speech.

Professor of Communication Dr. Joseph Burns conducted the hooding ceremony where Sophie Dagro was hooded by Associate Professor Dr. Amber Narro and Nicholas Bejeaux was hooded by Professor Dr. Joseph Mirando.

The hooding ceremony was followed by the pinning ceremony, which was conducted by NOCA President Noah Smith. The graduating students were pinned one after another by the person they chose, either parents, teacher or someone else. The chosen person pinned the student on the stage. 

Smith explained the importance of the pinning ceremony.

“The pinning ceremony gives us a chance to honor students in the major outside just the graduation,” said Smith. “And I think it’s nice to have something to recognize, something specifically inside the major as well as their graduation.”

Narro pointed out in her speech that one-third of the graduating seniors were the first in their family to graduate from college.

“Something that I realized yesterday was that a third of them are representing their family as the first to graduate in their family from college,” said Narro. “We actually like to refer to them as first generation college graduates, and they should be very, very proud of themselves for that.”

Narro showed her love towards the class.

“This class has been very special,” said Narro. “They’ve been a joy. I’ve enjoyed every second of it. We’ve laughed more than anything in this class, and they’re one to joke. And I think you’re going to enjoy their presentation tonight.”

Jeremy Rhodes went on to win “Best Paper” for his research “Heart Rate and Headlines: The Study of Physical Effect of Headlines with Heart Rate.”

“The reason I chose to do this is because I wanted to find a way to market myself to the TV broadcasting world,” said Rhodes. 

Rhodes was glad he could give something back to the profession with his research.

“I’m more happy that I was able to contribute something to the communication profession as a whole because that’s all that really matters,” said Rhodes.

The ceremony ended with seniors presenting their papers to the general public and defending it against a designated respondent. The researchers also took questions from the audience, which was mainly composed of other communication students.

Senior communication major Justin Redman wrote his paper on “Smearing the Opposition: An Analysis of Negative Political Advertisements Used in Smear Campaigns.” He explained how he chose the topic.

“Over the summer, I was reading about this book on smear campaign,” said Redman. “I was looking into the topics of fake news. And this book popped up in my suggestions feed, and I really looked into it. And it pushed my idea for what I wanted to do for this thesis.”

Senior communication major Marchaund Jones’s topic for his research was “The Perception of News Anchors Based on Sex and Race Through Different Individuals: Discernment of News Broadcasting.” He explained his reason in choosing this topic.

“When you’re looking at TV and watching the news, you notice what the person is wearing, what their hair looks like,” said Jones. “But one thing that we really do point out is their sex, whether they’re male or female, and of course, their race. One day, I want to be a news anchor myself, and I wanna know what people think of me when they see me, which leads to my thesis.