An Alternative Ceremony For Graduating Seniors In The Hudson Valley?
A high school in Mississippi is modifying how graduating seniors will get their diploma and walk across the stage to get it on what would of been their graduation day this year.
WLOX television says that the Gulfport High School graduating seniors will come to the local auditorium on the week of May 11th and will have a professional photographer take their picture in cap and gown, and a video crew will record their walk across the stage accepting their diploma. Each senior will be allowed to have 4 family members or legal guardians to watch. Each senior will have an appointment to go to the auditorium to have their event captured. Each student's video will be edited for a complete graduation ceremony that will also feature a pledge of allegiance, speeches by the class valedictorian and salutatorian, and other traditional segments of a high school graduation.
The event will be broadcast on the schools website on May 27th and can be viewed by family and friends locally and anywhere families and friends can access the video.
It is unlikely with the coronavirus-19 pandemic that schools in New York will be open in time to host graduation ceremonies, let alone have more than a couple of hundred in a football stadium or school auditorium of the graduation ceremony. This is a very unique idea of having students in Hudson Valley Schools get to celebrate their graduation with their loved ones at home and elsewhere and most schools do have an audio/video department plus it would help local photographers get a paying job because right now there isn't much demand since weddings, receptions, sweet 16s and business functions have been canceled or postponed because of the pandemic. If the school doesn't have an audio/video dept. that could do it they could hire and outside firm that would love to come and do the project being they too are in a job holding pattern. Or they could get volunteers from the surrounding community to lend a helping hand.
I hope this happens for all of our seniors at schools public and private in the Hudson Valley, it would also be a unique story to tell and show their children one day.