BY NATALIE MAHER
Sunday, June 27, will mark the end of an era for Wadsworth High schools 2020 class with graduation. Before this day, Wadsworth has decided to keep and modify events that lead up to graduation, including Prom and Baccalaureate. Due to COVID-19 many events had to be cancelled but Wadsworth High School rescheduled and worked with guidelines to give seniors a last goodbye.
The first event this weekend with be the Baccalaureate on Thursday evening, which has been a tradition for graduation weekend for many years. Not wanting to cancel it, guest speaker Rev. Daniel Doty offered to do a live virtual presentation for the seniors.
“Religious services are used to this mode of communication at this point,” said Steve Moore, principal of Wadsworth High School. “It seemed like a good way to still have the ceremony and a positive message.”
The administration also chose to keep prom, as they know the significance it holds with students within the graduating class, however with the guidelines set by the state, prom had to be completely re-invented.
“Many schools had cancelled and we really wanted to come up with an idea to at least get our seniors together for an event,” said Principal Moore.
Knowing that prom would not be the same for these students, a plan was devised to at least get the class together one last time before graduation. With the help from the post prom parents and the 2020 graduating seniors, Wadsworth High School will be putting on their own unorthodox prom, which they have called the “Senior Celebration.”
Friday night, students will get together at the high school. There will be two food truck options, Betty’s Bomb Burgers and Funky Truckeria. Following this, the seniors will drive to Blue Sky Theater, a near by drive-on movie theater, to watch the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
Since the beginning of lock down, the Commencement ceremony has been a topic of conversation of students and staff of WHS. In hopes of having a normal ceremony, it was pushed back from its original date of May 24. Since this is still not tangible, a survey sent out found that students would prefer to all be together in the parking lot in cars instead of in small groups in the gymnasium, or even individualized graduation ceremonies, which many surrounding schools held for their graduates.
The commencement ceremony will be held on Sunday June 28 at noon. While the students and their families will be cars, speeches will still be given by students and the graduates will still be able to get out of their car to walk across the stage to receive their diploma.
Even though these events will not be held in the traditional way, the senior class will still have the option to take part in them, as a senior class, one last time.
