Eckerd is the first college in the nation to accept on-campus pets, with more than 520 animals having graduated from it’s pet-themed ceremony.<\/p>\n
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. \u2014 From dogs to rabbits and even a crawfish, dozens of animals are taking their grand walk down the aisle in the Eckerd College Pet Graduation ceremony.<\/p>\n
Eckerd College seniors and their pets are taking part in the 13th annual ceremony, with 53 animals set to be awarded certificates.<\/p>\n
Among the graduates are 16 dogs, 16 cats, six snakes, six lizards, three fish, two rabbits, one bird, one ferret, one turtle and yes, even one crawfish named Tito.<\/p>\n
Additionally, one person will be honored by student leaders with an \u201chonorary dog-torate\u201d to recognize someone who is dedicated to animal welfare on campus or improving campus life for all creatures.<\/p>\n
The ceremony takes place from 5:30-7:00 p.m. Thursday at Eckerd’s Fox Hall.<\/p>\n
Eckerd is the first college in the nation to accept on-campus pets, with more than 520 animals having graduated from it’s pet-themed ceremony.<\/p>\n
Students are allowed to live in on-campus housing with one animal (dogs under 40 pounds, cats, rabbits, ferrets, ducks and chinchillas) or two small pets (fish, hamsters, gerbils, amphibians, nonvenomous reptiles under 4 feet long, and small birds).<\/p>\n
“Eckerd is committed to honoring the animals that support its students, and that commitment extends to an annual ceremony where each pet gets to wear a cap, hear its name called and be walked across the stage to the cheers of fellow pet graduates and owners,” the school said in a news release.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eckerd is the first college in the nation to accept on-campus pets, with more than 520 animals having…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":252820,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-252819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252819\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}