During the May 7 graduation ceremony for the College of Arts, Media and Design, or CAMD, Northeastern showed more reverence for artificial intelligence than for its student body.
At least, that was how it felt after hearing my name read out in a booming, stilted AI voice rather than by a human after four years of working diligently in the School of Journalism. This choice registered as disrespectful, lazy and, frankly, on-brand for Northeastern, a university that has prioritized its stature as a technology-forward university at every possible turn.
Hearing name after name reduced to a series of syllable combinations in an AI database certainly rubbed me the wrong way. The robot voice did not totally ruin the thrill of finally walking as an alumni of the J-school, but it did its best to rob the moment of its humanity. It also prompted me to question Northeastern’s higher-ups: Why couldn’t you take the time to learn our names and read them yourselves?
This question is not just directed toward CAMD administrators, either — during graduation week, thousands of students across different colleges endured this same experience. In the name of efficiency, Northeastern demeaned its students by streamlining one of the biggest moments of our lives and pawning off the simple task of verbally acknowledging our identity. The end result was a ceremony mostly carried by a series of disembodied, heavily-digitized voices — a cheapened product presented as legitimate.
Northeastern is not alone in its mission to AI-ify its graduation ceremonies — it’s one of over 300 other universities that has partnered with Tassel, a higher-education ticketing and graduation planning company. Northeastern relies on Tassel’s name pronunciation software, which generates a graduate’s name using a database of recordings and gives them the option to approve the pronunciation. As per Tassel’s website, a graduate can opt out of an AI voice reading their name only if they reject the pronunciation it generates three times, at which point, a voice artist would step in and do the job instead. While there is technically a choice a student can make, only those whose names are butchered will opt out, leaving others feeling like they have no choice but to submit.
Unsurprisingly, students at other universities that use this same program have taken issue with it, too. At West Chester University in Pennsylvania, student backlash caused the university to reverse course and sign up for a more expensive service where real people record the names manually. At the University of North Georgia, an online petition asking the school to reconsider its use of AI-generated names has received more than 2,000 signatures. The petition not only calls on administrators to understand what is lost when a machine says a name rather than a person but also alleges hypocrisy on the part of figures in academia who demonize the intrusion of AI into school work. Part of the petition, started by student Tripp Calhoun, reads, “I fail to see the difference between using ChatGPT to speed through a class assignment and using an AI system to speed through a graduation ceremony.”
To many students like myself, a small switch from an AI voice bot to a physical person would mean the world. No matter who that person is — even if it’s an administrator who isn’t highly visible on campus — at least it is someone. A human can reciprocate our sense of joy and can understand the gravity of the moment and the academic rigor that we endured to get to this point. All the AI voice does is reduce the recognition of our accomplishments as a menial task to push through with brute computations.
Some university administrators say AI can help create a ceremony that runs with more precise timing and reduced mispronunciations. In fairness, this may be the truth. Past graduations at Northeastern were a bit clunkier — with ill-timed graphics and the butchering of many foreign students’ names. Still, this is not an excuse to throw out the human variable entirely. Graduation is not about the flow of the ceremony, it’s about people celebrating people.
Northeastern owes us the responsibility of going through the names beforehand, even if it complicates ceremony logistics. If it’s too much of a task for one faculty member in each school to take on, the university can simply involve more faculty in the process.
Each and every student who made it to the finish line put in years of hard work — whether academics, clubs or social connections — as well as a lot of money into this university. If we provide this much for the school, then its administrators can put a little bit more time into us. Anything less signals that Northeastern does not truly value our level of effort and would rather peddle an AI-powered tomorrow than give students our well-earned respect.
Henry Bova graduated with a bachelor of arts in journalism in May 2025. He can be reached at [email protected].
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