Dangerous heat at UO graduation: ‘Could have been so easily avoided’

Wearing heavy black ceremonial robes, the dean of University of Oregon’s College of Design and school staff members repositioned more than 500 chairs on Hayward Field after attendees in the stands moved to the shaded side of the stadium to escape the scorching sun.

Then, about a half-hour after the ceremony was supposed to begin at 4 p.m. on Monday, June 15, the dean, Adrian Parr Zaretsky, took the stage to address the graduates seated before her.

The dean got through most of her speech before asking the audience to applaud the staff’s work in the hot weather. Then, she collapsed.

“I felt myself starting to get dizzy, my ears were starting to block up, and then at a certain point the next thing I know I was on the ground,” Zaretsky told Lookout Eugene-Springfield.

Those who saw her faint told Zaretsky that her whole body was shaking, she said. The next thing she remembers is being wheeled off the field in a stretcher. Zaretsky said she was taken to the hospital, where she received intravenous fluids until she was taken home by her husband late Monday night. 

Four graduates also fell to the ground while waiting to enter Hayward, according to a witness account, and they were taken indoors to cool off. 

Those incidents at Hayward occurred about an hour after the university decided to reschedule some ceremonies at Autzen Stadium due to extreme heat. But the College of Design’s ceremony, also outdoors, continued as scheduled. 

Extreme heat has killed more people in the United States than any other weather-related hazard over the last 30 years, according to the National Weather Service. 

The public health threat is why meteorologists from the service’s Portland office issued a heat advisory last week, ahead of Monday’s record-breaking temperature of 98 degrees. 

More than 35,000 people — including graduates and their supporters — attended ceremonies at Hayward Field and Autzen Stadium throughout the day. 

While the university’s management plan for this year’s commencement events called for water and cooling fans, it did not include relocation, either proactively or retroactively, though that step was eventually taken, said Angela Seydel, UO spokesperson and director of issues management. 

She also added, “as we do following every major event, we will review this year’s ceremonies as part of our ongoing commitment to improving the experience for our graduates and their families.”

But for nearly 5,000 graduates, the once-in-a-lifetime moment has already passed. 

155 degrees at Autzen: ‘Nobody told us’  

The speaker who gave the land acknowledgement at the morning’s main commencement ceremony in Autzen Stadium noted things were already getting warm. 

Jason Younker, adviser to UO’s president on sovereignty and government-to-government relations and chief of the Coquille Indian Tribe, told attendees at about 9 a.m. that Eugene was already in the 70s, but the turf was closer to 100 degrees. 

He then referenced a popular Ducks catchphrase, “It never rains in Autzen Stadium.”

The cloudless skies, unrelenting sun, and heat from a high-pressure weather system drove the temperature on the field higher throughout the day. By the afternoon, the surface reached a scalding 155 degrees, Seydel confirmed. 

But that’s something that Trinity White, a geology and environmental science student, didn’t know as she joined a queue of thousands of other graduates waiting outside Autzen for the College of Arts and Sciences’ natural sciences 2:30 p.m. ceremony. 

Graduates flocked to a small strip of shade next to the nearby practice field, seeking relief from the scorching sun, White said. 

They were parched. The university told them to not bring their own water into the ceremony, and so volunteers in golf carts dropped off two cases of water bottles. Students began “fighting over” them, she said.

Eventually, there wasn’t enough shade for everyone, and volunteers shepherded graduates into the adjacent indoor Moshofsky Center to wait, which wasn’t much cooler than outside, White said. Sweat was dripping out from under their caps and soaking through their gowns.

White, and others in line, then got texts from friends and families at about 3 p.m. that confirmed their worst fears: UO was rescheduling the ceremony due to extreme heat. Gasps and screams rippled through the crowd. 

“They [family and friends] got the announcement before we did,” White said. “Nobody told us.”

Her loved ones, including her parents, two siblings, girlfriend and three friends, had been waiting in the stands at Autzen for nearly an hour for a ceremony that never happened. 

Worse, White had opted to skip the universitywide ceremony earlier in the day because she was planning to attend this one. 

Even worse still, she wouldn’t be able to attend the rescheduled ceremony, set for 7:30 p.m. at Matthew Knight Arena, because she had reservations for a graduation dinner with friends and family. 

“I didn’t realize how much walking meant to me until it was canceled,” White said. “It just felt like my whole college experience just ended so anti-climactically.”

UO’s response 

In an email, Seydel told Lookout Eugene-Springfield that “Monday’s record-setting heat made conditions during our afternoon ceremonies challenging, and we understand the frustration of the graduates and families whose celebrations were affected.”

Part of what made Autzen Stadium so hot was a field covering she said is “always used” during events. 

“It added radiant heat in these record temperatures, and as on-field conditions reached unsafe levels we made the decision to move the affected ceremonies indoors,” she said. 

While UO has emergency operations and hazard response plans, it does not appear to have a clear framework for moving or rescheduling major events due to heat, according to documents reviewed by Lookout Eugene-Springfield. Seydel said she would need to check further on that point, but did not get back to reporters by the time this story was published. 

However, the university has an incident management plan for large events like commencement, with this year’s outlining specific responses to the heat that included supplying water, moving people to grassy areas and providing information on personal safety. 

Some of that guidance came through email a week before graduation day, June 8, with the subject line: “It will be HOT!'”

“The forecast for Commencement Day is calling for temperatures in the low 90s. Those participating in ceremonies in Autzen will be much warmer, as the stadium turf is hotter than the outside temperature,” the email read in part, including general heat safety tips like staying hydrated, wearing sunscreen and wearing loose, light-colored clothing.

However, in a separate message to College of Arts and Sciences faculty, the university advised that “faculty should wear regalia,” while also noting, “Consider bringing sunglasses and hats. PLEASE KEEP HOT WEATHER IN MIND – the field gets hotter than surrounding areas.” 

June heat waves become recurring risk

The state climateologist, Larry O’Neill, knows firsthand how heavy and hot regalia can be in mid-June. He is also associate professor in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University. 

“It’s always been a real concern that we could get one of these early season heat waves, where it’s over 80 or 90 degrees,” he said. 

The Eugene-Springfield area has experienced nearly twice as many days above 90 degrees this decade as in previous decades, averaging about 33 annually over the past six years compared with a historical average of 17, according to O’Neill. 

Four of those six years included June days with temperatures of 90 degrees or higher, including 2021, when the Pacific Northwest heat dome killed more than 500 people across the region. 

“With climate change we’ve already solidified more warming. We know these conditions will continue to happen and they will actually probably happen more often for the next couple of decades,” O’Neill said. “So when we get events like this that happen early in the year, it’s a test of our resilience.”  

UO ‘fallen short’ 

Dylan Plummer, a campaign adviser with the Sierra Club on local clean energy initiatives, points to two core elements of climate planning. 

“It’s about reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and two, it’s about adapting to the already baked-in effects of the climate crisis. The University of Oregon has fallen short on both of those fronts,” he said.  

Plummer has followed UO’s climate action plan since he studied as a student there and served on the student-driven Climate Justice League. For nearly a decade, students have called on the university — the largest single source in Eugene of greenhouse gas emissions, which trap heat in the atmosphere and contributes to climate change — to reduce its carbon footprint. 

Students are still pushing for a reduction in those emissions, including Jack Dodson, who is entering his senior year as a double major in environmental studies and Indigenous, race, and ethnic studies.

“[UO] is burning fossil fuels on campus, and at the same time is having to, you know, cancel and postpone their graduation ceremonies because of extreme heat,” said Dodson, who is now an organizer with the league.

“I think yesterday [Monday] was a perfect example of how, you know, climate change is here, it’s getting worse. It is directly affecting the University of Oregon, and despite that, UO continues to delay significant action,” Dodson said.  

Dodson heard from friends who attended hot ceremonies at Hayward Field. 

That is where Candice Francis, a graduate in the College of Design, witnessed Dean Zaretsky collapse from heat exhaustion — after the university had called off ceremonies at Autzen. 

After Zaretsky’s fall, the rest of the speeches were called off. Francis estimated that about 70% of College of Design graduates left Hayward after receiving their diploma instead of returning to their seats due to the uncomfortable heat. 

The students were already frustrated. Francis said she watched four fellow graduates keel over from the heat while they waited outside Hayward without shade for more than 90 minutes. 

Also adding to their frustration, Francis said, graduates walked through the air-conditioned indoor track inside Hayward on their way to the much hotter outdoor field where the ceremony was taking place — offering just a couple of minutes of relief from the weather. 

Graduates who had collapsed while waiting to enter Hayward were taken there, where they received ice, before being sent onto the field for the ceremony, she said. 

She said UO should have rescheduled all outdoor events when it called off the ceremonies at Autzen. 

“I’m really upset that they haven’t even reached out to us yet, they haven’t apologized, they haven’t sent out any emails, even acknowledging that it happened,” Francis said. “They haven’t taken responsibility at all. It could have been so easily avoided.”

Correction: This story was updated to correct the spelling of Jason Younker’s name.