NARRATOR：

Now listen to two students discussing the article.

FEMALE STUDENT：

You know, I wish they wouldn't do this.

MALE STUDENT：

Why?

FEMALE STUDENT：

Well, I think it's unnecessary.

I mean, as far as the first reason goes...

yeah, sure, it takes a long time to have everyone receive their diploma individually,

especially now that there are more students.

But there's an easy way to make it shorter.

MALE STUDENT：

What's that?

FEMALE STUDENT：

Reduce the number of speeches.

I mean, a lot of people give speeches--

students, professors, administrators, the president of the university ...

Do we really need that many speeches?

MALE STUDENT：

Probably not. And a lot of the speeches are pretty boring anyway. So yeah, we probably could cut out a few.

FEMALE STUDENT：

Yeah.And I don't think their second reason's very good, either, about the space.

MALE STUDENT：

How's that?

FEMALE STUDENT：

The problem isn't the size of the hall;

it's that they allow students to invite too many people to come and watch.

All they need to do is reduce the number of guests each graduating student gets to invite.

MALE STUDENT：

Yeah, I guess that could solve the problem.

FEMALE STUDENT：

Yeah, I mean, right now each graduating student can invite up to ten people.

That's too many--

at most schools, students only get to invite like four or five people.

If we just said, "Okay you can only invite six people,"

that'd still be more than most other schools and the ceremony could stay the way it is.