Graduation, prom and spring formal season has arrived. But this year, tux and gown rental stores are empty. Caps and gowns sit somewhere on warehouse shelves. Because of the pandemic, students won’t have the chance to navigate these rites of passage — or the platitudes about endings turning into new beginnings.
For millions of American students, no amount of presidential spin can hide the fact that their government failed to prevent a plague.
For millions of American students, no amount of presidential spin can hide the fact that their government failed to prevent a plague.
As a result, they’ve lost out on what could’ve been a photo finish: spring sports championships, honors assemblies, posed shots outside of banquet halls, candids from dances in school gymnasiums, and, perhaps most frustrating of all, photos clad in graduation regalia. No one will be decorating their mortarboard with jokes about student loan debt.
In an effort to celebrate these young people and make up, in a small way, for what will be lost, people across the internet have been participating in a viral “senior photo challenge” where they post their own snapshots of proms and graduations gone by. However sincere the act, dusting off and displaying those graduation photos arguably steals the spotlight. It also brushes past the reality that prom and graduation season aren’t joyous occasions for everybody.
(There’s another more practical reason to think twice about sharing portraits: According to a report from the Better Business Bureau, the gesture may also make you vulnerable to hackers and scammers, some of whom are taking advantage of the COVID-19 crisis to commit identity theft or even steal taxpayers’ stimulus checks.)
Security considerations aside, there are probably better ways to support our graduates this year.
Following former President Barack Obama’s stirring endorsement video of former Vice President Joe Biden’s presidential bid, a high school senior from Los Angeles sent a viral tweet asking Obama to offer his “voice of hope” through a virtual commencement address.
"Like most high school/college seniors, I'm saddened by the loss of milestone events, prom & graduation. In an unprecedented time, it would give us great comfort to hear your voice. We ask you to consider giving a national commencement speech to the class of 2020," Lincoln Debenham wrote. According to CNN, an Obama spokesperson said they were aware of the tweets and were “very flattered,” but wouldn’t comment further.
A kid can dream, right? And Debenham’s not the only one trying to get creative.
In Baton Rouge, high school senior Jada Nelson wore a cap and gown, and posed for photos with Clorox wipes, Lysol and rubber gloves behind rows of caution tape, because she wants to remember that she and her fellow graduates did what they had to do to survive. “Later on, this is going to be in our history books, and this will be something for her to look back on and for her children and grandchildren,” her mother said. “She'll be able to say, 'Well, I actually was a part of that, see.'”
Meanwhile in Pennsylvania, students at Lancaster’s J.P. McCaskey High School are participating in a photo project where they hold up signs that index the people, places and things they’ll miss the most. Some of them posed while wearing their protective masks. McCaskey junior Georgia Cox told Fox 43 she embarked on the effort “to show that they're going to move past all of this, and this isn't the end of anything.”
And in Hawaii, NBC-affiliate KHNL-TV asked parents to submit photos of their graduates, so that they could be honored both live on air and online, in lieu of traditional commencement exercises.
It's also important to remember that not all high school experiences are created equally. Personally, graduation season for me comes with complicated memories.
It's also important to remember that not all high school experiences are created equally. Personally, graduation season for me comes with complicated memories.
More than a month before my senior prom, as a semi-closeted queer teen, I marched to my high school’s front office to deliver the signed parental permission slip required to ask a prom date from a different school. The administrative staff laughed when they saw my date was a guy, and that his mom signed the dotted line. My parents, however, insisted on me taking prom pics with a girl — any girl would do — so they would have evidence of the portrait of heterosexual coupledom they had in mind for me.
They got their wish, in an odd way, after a quarrel with my date prompted me to call things off days before prom. Instead, I came up with a more subversive idea to help a queer classmate and close friend who faced similar pressure at home; I took her crush from another school as my date instead. On prom night, I flew as a solo social butterfly, and occasionally watched with longing as they danced the evening away. Their homophobic parents were none the wiser.
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Thus seeing my school-issued prom photo is awkward, as it is for many students, queer or not, for a variety of reasons. High school doesn’t typically play out like “Friday Night Lights,” and a lot of the rituals we are expected to cherish end up being confusing, scary or sad.
Ultimately, this is their senior year, for better and for worse. We don’t need to rub what these young people are potentially losing in their faces. Let’s allow the Class of 2020 to deejay their own dance.