Crowd locked out of F-V graduation ceremony

"Everybody else has their mother and father there, OK? Where's mine?" asked graduate Rachel Yon.

Her mother, Gwen Yon, was among other relatives and friends who said they were kept out of the center's Memorial Auditorium for the ceremony, even though, they said, they had tickets to the event.

"We felt horrible about it, but we couldn't get them in the building," Lavery said.

Thomas said he is not sure the discrepancy between the number of tickets issued and the center's capacity was the reason some ticketholders got locked out.

"It's wrong. It's unjustifiably wrong," Gwen Yon said. "They need to suffer some kind of ramifications. This is a once in a lifetime thing. We've done paid whatever fees they had to pay. They got their money."

Lavery said there was minimum staffing by Progress Energy Center employees and that each school is responsible for its graduation ceremony, including the number of tickets distributed to students and who takes those tickets at the door.