Commencement 2 Student Awards: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Commencement 2 Student Awards program is

The Commencement 2 Student Awards program belongs to La Salle University, a university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is not a media-run best-of list or a platform contest: the ballot sits on lasalle.edu, the university's own domain, inside its commencement section. The page that carries it is titled Student Awards Nominations, and its whole purpose is gathering nominations for student awards handed out as part of graduation.

That placement matters for understanding who the ballot is for. The audience is the university community itself, the students, faculty and staff of La Salle University in Philadelphia, rather than the general public of a city or region. The university's address on the page is 1900 West Olney Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19141, and the program carries the university's name and domain rather than a sponsor's.

The structure of the ballot is also unusually specific. La Salle divides its awards into two nomination pools, and states on the page which pool each award draws from. That split, plus a published grade requirement, makes this a more rule-bound ballot than a typical open-voting promotion. The key facts are set out below.

The dated facts: cycles, deadline and what is not printed

Two cycles of the Commencement 2 Student Awards are confirmed, 2024 and 2025. The program is treated as an annual feature of La Salle University's commencement season in Philadelphia, so a further cycle would be expected alongside graduation, but the university sets the details of each round when it publishes that round's page.

The one date printed on the nomination page is Tuesday, Jan. 28, given as the due date for all nominations. The page text states the deadline without attaching a year to it, and no opening date for the nomination window appears beside it. A cycle with a late-January due date sits well before graduation itself, which fits a nomination round that has to be judged before a commencement ceremony.

Several things the page does not print are worth flagging. La Salle publishes no award roster in the visible page text, only a pointer to its Award Descriptions section, and no rule on how many nominations a single person may submit or who may take part beyond the two nominee pools already described; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

What that leaves a supporter with is firm in parts and open in others. The deadline, the grade requirement and the split of nominee pools are stated by the university. The award list for a given cycle and any limits on submissions are only ever visible on the live page for that cycle.

How a supporter nominates on the La Salle ballot

The action a supporter performs here is a nomination, not a click-a-button vote on a polling platform. The literal sequence starts at the Student Awards Nominations page on lasalle.edu. That page opens with a note pointing to the Award Descriptions section for more information on each award, so reading those descriptions is the first concrete step before any form is touched.

The page then draws its most important line. Some awards accept nominees from self, peers, faculty and staff, which means a student can put forward themselves or a classmate, and a faculty or staff member can put forward a student they know. Other awards accept nominees from faculty and staff only, which closes the student route entirely for those awards. Matching the nominee to the right pool is what keeps a nomination valid.

One requirement applies on top of the pools: the nominee shall have at least a 2.5 cumulative Grade Point Average at the time of application. The university prints this on the nomination page itself, so it is a threshold a nominator should confirm with the nominee before submitting rather than after.

The final steps are mechanical. Complete the nomination form shown on the page, and submit it with the printed deadline in mind: all nominations are due Tuesday, Jan. 28. Because the form is the only route in, a nomination that misses the date has no second path on this ballot.

How this ballot sits beside Pennsylvania's other programs

Pennsylvania has a crowded field of reader- and community-voted programs, but almost none of them look like this one. The state's biggest ballots are media-run best-of contests: Best of Philly (Philadelphia Magazine) in this same city, Best of the 'Burgh, Best of Berks (Berks County Living Magazine), Best of the Lehigh Valley (Lehigh Valley Style), Erie Reader Best of Erie, and the Bucks County & Chester County Readers' Choice ballot. Each is run by a publisher for a regional audience, usually with public voting on a contest platform.

The Commencement 2 Student Awards is the opposite shape. Its organizer is a university rather than a publication, its host is the organizer's own domain rather than a contest platform, and its audience is a campus community rather than a metro area. Where a best-of ballot invites anyone to vote for businesses across a region, this one filters nominees through two defined pools and a grade requirement before any award is decided.

Supporters should weigh that difference in reach. A regional best-of contest rewards broad public mobilization across a city or county. This ballot rewards mobilization inside a much smaller circle, the students, faculty and staff who are eligible to nominate, which makes personal outreach to that circle the whole game rather than one tactic among many.

Strengthening support in the La Salle nomination round

Because this ballot runs through a nomination form with a fixed due date, effective support looks like coordinated submissions rather than repeated clicks. The eligible nominators are named on the page itself: self, peers, faculty and staff for one group of awards, and faculty and staff only for the other. A student with a strong case should therefore work both directions, asking classmates to nominate and approaching faculty or staff who can speak to the nominee's work, keeping in mind the 2.5 cumulative Grade Point Average every nominee must meet.

The university prints no rules beyond its nomination structure, so the safe assumption is that the organizer expects genuine nominations from its own community and would treat anything else poorly. General tactics for organizing real supporters, timing outreach around a deadline and avoiding tactics organizers penalize, are covered in our votes guide, and our award-votes page explains how outside support is usually framed for award-style ballots generally, even though this particular university ballot has no paid tier and runs entirely on its own form.