Students sit in during Nottingham's graduation Wednesday night
/ photo: Caitlin Nuclo
SYRACUSE -- A local school district is trying to make amends after some family members were kept out of a graduation ceremony Wednesday night.
The Syracuse City School District tells CNY Central that counterfeit tickets were used at last night’s Nottingham High School graduation. The legitimate tickets had an embossing on them, and ushers at the Mulroy Civic Center in Syracuse noticed that some of the tickets used were not embossed.
About 20 minutes after the ceremony started, the fire marshal noticed that the building was at capacity, and no more people were allowed inside. At that point ushers had already been turning away some people, because they had realized some of the tickets were counterfeit.
The school district has confirmed that some family members with legitimate tickets were turned away, because there were too many people inside the building. The Civic Center, which is part of the Oncenter complex, seats approximately 2,100. There were 217 graduating students in attendance Wednesday night.
The district says it is offering families who didn’t get to attend graduation a DVD of the ceremony, as well as a chance to take part in an August ceremony.
Brian Nolan, Director of High Schools for the city, says the district is not planning on investigating where the fake tickets came from.
"We're not even saying it was students," said Nolan. "It could have been family members - who knows who was responsible for this."
Corcoran High School will hold its graduation Thursday night in the same location, but Corcoran’s ceremony uses reserved seating, which means each ticket has a seat assigned to it. Nottingham used general admission, or first come first serve, seating. Nolan says it is likely Nottingham will move to a similar system next year.
"We definitely will move towards having the computer generated ticket produced by the Civic Center," said Nolan. "It costs a little more money but everyone will have a reserved seat."
Henninger High School’s ceremony is at the War Memorial Arena, which has a much larger 7,000 seat capacity. Fowler High School uses the Civic Center and a ticket system similar to Nottingham's but Nolan says the smaller graduating class should prevent any seating problems. Nolan says ushers will also be on the lookout for any fake tickets.
