Neida Alcantar 
EDINBURG – Eryka Duberney applied for commencement five months before her graduation date. She was surprised to see her name wasn’t on the program.
“I see her messages and they’re like, ‘Hey, where’s your name?’”
Duberney was sitting across the stage when her mother sent her a text: she wasn’t on the program.
“So then I finally go through it…I get to the last ‘D’ and then it goes to ‘E’. I’m like, ‘Oh, so I need to be here. Why isn’t my name here,’” said UTRGV alumni Eryka Duberney.
She could not believe it.
“To have so much pride in this university to then not be recognized, it was kind of like a heart-breaking feeling,” said Duberney.
Duberney tells us she started to worry her name would not be called out on stage. Fortunately, it was.
University Registrar Sofia Montes states a few possibilities as to why this could have occurred.
“And sometimes causes for that might be, for example, a course substitution or waiver of degree requirements have been submitted, but not yet fully reviewed and approved or that it hasn’t been submitted, and sometimes those actions are things that will turn a student from not meeting degree requirements to meeting degree requirements,” said Montes.
Duberney claims she had applied on time for graduation — even receiving the invitation a month in advance. She sent UTRGV-TV the e-mails that she received with the confirmations and time stamps.
Duberney says she can’t change the past, but hopes that other UTRGV students do not find themselves in her situation.
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