By Claire Svetkey :
This year’s graduation ceremony, on June 7, 2020, was necessarily unorthodox, but no less meaningful than traditional ceremonies in the past. Instead of hundreds of families crowded into the field house, hundreds of families sat at home and watched on televisions or computers as videos taken beforehand – of band members performing, students singing, graduates crossing the stage holding their diplomas – played to celebrate the class of 2020.
To begin the ceremony, members of the BHS Wind Ensemble and Symphonic Band played “Pomp and Circumstance,” their individual video recordings digitally lined up to create an ensemble sound. Next, senior Valentine Reynolds sang the national anthem.
After her performance, BHS principal Isaac Taylor was the first to give a speech. He praised the “heart” and “wisdom” of the class of 2020, as well as their mature response to hardship and unprecedented circumstances – he mentioned specifically both the coronavirus pandemic and two more personal tragedies: the losses of their classmate Cleo Theodoropulos and of former chorus teacher Mr. Landers. Mr. Taylor expressed the hope that the graduating seniors would remember the “million experiences, individual and collective” that have made up their high school experience as a whole, rather than focusing only on the disappointment of spending the end of senior year in quarantine. He used a quote attributed to Alexander the Great to highlight the impact of great teachers, adding that the class of 2020 had themselves been great teachers to him and to each other. He concluded, “We can be teachers and learners every day if we open our hearts.”
Senior class president Caroline Findlay gave the next speech, again spotlighting the “resilience in the face of adversity” displayed by her classmates. She found a silver lining to the difficult situation of the past few months:
“The strength that we have found to get through this together will stay with us throughout our lives.”
Members of the Senior A Cappella group, in another digitally-created ensemble video, beautifully sang “I Lived” by OneRepublic, and then the two senior recipients of the School Committee Award for Outstanding Achievement in Scholarship, Samantha Widdison and Cynthia Lu, gave speeches. Echoing Findlay’s sentiment, Widdison told her classmates, “It is up to us to decide what we make of unexpected situations.” The seniors, she said, have “persisted” and “endured” the pandemic, which proves that they “can survive anything.”
One by one, the seniors’ names were read, and they walked across the auditorium stage in their caps and gowns, smiled, and held up their diplomas as the cameras cut to a close-up. For seniors who chose not to be recorded, a photo appeared to accompany their names. Senior class president Caroline Findlay had been reading the names of her classmates; she was the last to cross the stage, as senior class vice president Chloe Park read her name. Mr. Taylor finished the graduation ceremony with some brief concluding remarks.
As Cynthia Lu said in her speech to her fellow seniors, “When we throw up our graduation caps, there is a limitless sky above, waiting for our voices to fill the space.” In a world that, especially at the moment, can feel uncertain and unpredictable, this advice is invaluable: now is the time to speak into the limitless sky and fill the space. Seniors, entering the world beyond high school, have the opportunity to do exactly that. Good luck and congratulations to the class of 2020!