The moment a senior walks across the stage at graduation marks when their life truly begins. However, due to COVID-19 and quarantine, many seniors will never experience this moment. We all know how the class of 2020 graduated, with a drive-through graduation ceremony with Mr. Wight, but 2021 seniors want to graduate on AFHS property. For example, right out on the football field.
The class of 2021 seniors have been looking into an in-person graduation ceremony that could be held on the field of the football stadium on campus. Picture this: students could be socially distanced in chairs on the field, while a limited number of family members look on from the bleachers as each student walks across the stage to receive their diploma. A graduation outdoors would be infinitely safer outdoors than inside the convention center, and AFHS would not be the first school in NC to implement this type of graduation either.
According to News and Observer, Duke University plans to hold an in-person graduation ceremony for their spring graduates. This ceremony will be held in the Wallace Wade Stadium for Duke’s spring class of 2021, who have also been regular participants in the testing surveillance program, which has slowed the spread amongst students. However, this event will be for students only, as the college wants to continue to keep students safe while also giving them this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. UNC and NC State still have not come out with a plan for their graduations, but both have dates have been set at their respective stadiums for possible in-person graduation.
Holding an outdoor ceremony for students would ensure a graduation date, one a little closer to the graduation that many students imagined. With the current graduation setting at the Raleigh Convention center being cramped and rushed, many schools have to fit their graduation ceremonies into one day. Graduation held on campus would better allow students to take in the moment, while more time could be given to the monumental event in students’ lives.
Outdoor graduation would allow the seniors of AFHS to have a real ceremony, one closer to the one they’ve been dreaming about since elementary school. The moment a senior walks across that stage to receive their diploma will stay with them forever, yet many in the class of 2021 fear that they may be left out of this monumental moment. Holding the ceremony at AFHS, on the football field would not only lessen the drive to the graduation location, it would also ensure that students feel heard and that they feel that their administration wants them to have the best graduation possible in these times.
In this age of pandemic and online school, students have been searching for any sense of normality. An in-person graduation ceremony, free of screens and bedroom backgrounds, would allow AFHS seniors to fully experience this tremendous moment in their lives far more than they would with a virtual or drive-through ceremony. Although this graduation will be full of masks, hand sanitizers, and social distancing, many students still look to Mr. Wight in hopes of an in-person graduation. Seniors have put in the work to make it as far as they have, to have for this moment of recognition.
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