Crowds of students dressed in Carolina blue robes and their families will be walking the streets of Chapel Hill this weekend, as students celebrate their graduations. UNC’s Spring Commencement ceremony is this Sunday, Mother’s Day, at Kenan Stadium.

Chapel Hill Mayor Pam Hemminger calls this a big weekend for Chapel Hill that brings many people to the area.

“We’ll have the banners out along Franklin Street; we do an extra effort to clean up and get ready and to make sure there aren’t traffic congestion places; we have the directional signs out; we have a lot of our staff out there helping out as people come to the community for the graduation activities,” said Hemminger.

Hemminger said the crowd size is similar a football game but could be bigger.

“So usually there’s around 7,000 or more graduates when you add up all the undergraduates and graduate students coming in, and then they have all these family members coming in and then there’s staff and faculty that have to be there for graduation so there’s a lot of activity in the downtown area,” Hemminger said.

According to Hemminger, hotels look forward to the weekend and collaborate to make sure that people know where to go and what to do.

“There’s a lot of collaboration with parking and shuttle buses; the university runs all the park and rides as well; we help coordinate all that, just keeping people safe, but it’s usually a very big and active weekend in our community so we love it when the weather is good,” Hemminger said.

The commencement ceremony will begin at 9 am on Sunday. For more information click here.

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