This weekend and next, more than 60 high schools across Central New York are holding commencement ceremonies to send their graduates on to the next phase of their lives. The milestone is all the sweeter because this year’s graduates and their families can celebrate together, with few worries about catching or spreading Covid-19.
The rest of us also are graduating, in a way. We’re leaving behind 15 months of restrictions on our activities and picking up the threads of our lives before Covid. Gov. Andrew Cuomo lifted most of the state’s onerous rules last week, when 70% of New Yorkers had received at least one vaccine dose.
While the pandemic isn’t quite over, and many uncertainties await, let’s take a moment to celebrate how far we’ve come.
A handy marker is the distance between last year’s high school graduations and this year’s.
Class of 2020: masks for everyone, contactless diploma pickup, drive-by celebrations, elbow bumps with the principal, immediate family only. Also, no to proms and parties.
Class of 2021: no more masks for the mostly outdoor ceremonies, looser limits on the number of attendees, no contact tracing or Covid test required. Also, yes to proms and parties.
It’s a bummer that New York changed its outdated limits on graduations too late for many schools to adjust – befitting a school year whipsawed by the pandemic. There were infections and quarantines; remote schooling and hybrid schooling and in-person schooling; extra-curricular activities held in new ways or not at all; live-streaming of classes, sporting events and concerts; and an untold number of never-before-seen problems and solutions to match.
We salute every student, parent, teacher, coach, counselor, administrator and support staff who got through it – and send some extra cheers to those who carried the exhausted and emotionally wounded with them. We congratulate the graduates whose path to a high school diploma took a detour through a global pandemic. That’s an accomplishment in itself. They have earned the right to celebrate.
It’s also OK to grieve for all that we lost to Covid: the people who died or became ill, missed time with friends and faraway family, forgone experiences with classmates, teammates and friends.
Look ahead now. Graduation is called a commencement because it’s a beginning – of college, of adult life, of possibilities, of the future. We’re all heading into the unknown. Having been through this fire, the graduates of Covid-19 are better prepared to meet it.
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Congratulations, graduates. You made it through the year of Covid-19 (Editorial Board Opinion) - syracuse.com
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