Alexa Sano told her fellow graduates in the J.P. McCaskey High School Campus class of 2020 that “our lives [are] bookended by historical events” while speaking in her recent alma mater’s historic first virtual commencement ceremony broadcast on live television.
“In these times,” she told her 677 fellow graduates, “the best we can do is to not let our circumstances define us, but rather rise above them and show ourselves and others what we can do in the face of adversity.”
Inevitably, the ceremony’s remarks centered on graduating amid a global pandemic that shut down schools from March 13 through the end of the year. The graduates posed in their caps and gowns with diplomas separately over a span of several days prior to the ceremony. The district edited all the diploma walks together for the broadcast.
But peakers also addressed the racial unrest across the United States.
In deeply personal remarks, graduate Jason Brown admitted to worrying if the world was stacked against him from birth. But he encouraged his classmates to embrace change in their own lives and in the world.
“Those who marched for freedom and for their chance at the American Dream, did they give up?” he asked. “Those dead at the hands of racism and bigotry should fuel the ambition we have today.”
In spite of the pandemic, about half of the graduates still plan to attend college in the fall, at places like Chaminade University of Honolulu, Drexel University, Howard University, La Salle, Middlebury, Penn State, The New School, and the University of Miami (FL). Others are joining the Marines, Air Force and Navy or starting job training programs through JobCorps and the Lancaster CTC.
Many also plan to enter the workforce full-time with employers like Warfel Construction, Speed Auto, Woodcrest Villa and Manor Care.
Superintendent Dr. Damaris Rau praised these students and others working at grocery stores and nursing homes in her remarks as be3ing “on the front lines of this pandemic.”
“You are all leaving McCaskey a better place for your having been here,” she said. “I ask you to pledge something to yourself, to your peers, and to your community … that you will continue to lead—because we need you.”