McCaskey High School’s 88th commencement began with a 10-minute rain shower but ended with a bang as 670 members of the Class of 2022 celebrated their diplomas amid a fireworks display at Clipper Magazine Stadium.
“We are the dream that Dr. [Martin Luther] King dreamt of, that our foremothers dreamt of,” said Essence Winters, one of three senior speakers to address the graduates.
It was the first time that McCaskey held its commencement in Clipper Magazine Stadium, the 5,000 seat minor league baseball stadium. Graduates filed into seats on the infield facing a large stage at second base. The first grads to take the field were welcomed with a brief rain shower, but the evening turned quickly dry and comfortable for the graduates and an estimated crowd of 3,500 parents, family members and friends.
“I have been asking myself this question for the longest time: Can a 5-year-old boy, born in a refugee camp, who used to live in a leaky bamboo hut, achieve the American dream?” said Sujan Upreti, a former refugee from Nepal who relocated to the U.S. in 2009. “I believe I can achieve it, and I believe all of you can achieve it as well.”
Upreti is committed to Temple University in the fall.
“You don’t have to be an immigrant to have the American dream,” he said. “Every one of you who is sitting here tonight can go after your dreams and achieve them”
In her speech, Winters called on the graduates to take responsibility for leading change in the world.
“We must hold ourselves accountable for how we choose to display our free will,” she said. “It’s up to us to live up to the expectations that we set for ourselves.”
During the program, seniors Maria Longenecker, Jadyn Torres and Veronica Bates, also accompanying on acoustic guitar, sang Ben Platt’s “Grow as We Go”
The final student speaker, Colin Speitel, looked back on the class’s experience in high school, including the pandemic years, which began when they were sophomores.
“Confined to our bedrooms, kitchens, living rooms, basements, where learning became a small rectangular screen,” was like the “rollercoaster of high school” going off its tracks.
But, he said, “These hills, turns, and loops of our individual roller coasters would become crucial to our development as adults.”
In a nearly 50-year McCaskey tradition, the newest member of the Hall of Honor was revealed and inducted. This year’s recipient, Naomi Main, is a highly accomplished violinist and a National Merit Scholar who is heading to Yale in the fall.
She is one of 62% of graduates who have plans to attend college in the fall, at schools including Yale University, the University of Pennsylvania, Grinnell College, Smith College, Tufts University, Thaddeus Stevens College, and Clark Atlanta, a historically black research university. Others are joining the US Army, Navy and Marines.
About one in six plans to enter the workforce in fields ranging from medicine to child care to construction.