As graduation gets closer by the day, preparations are being made for a smooth ceremony. There are many different roles for students that have to be filled. A big role is filled by the class officers, who read the names of the students walking. In addition, one class officer gets the honor of giving a speech.
“Students apply to be class officers, and they work through being a class officer, and then when it comes time to be a part of the graduation ceremony, they will write draft speeches if they want to be a part of it,” Principal Andrew Theado said.
To become a class officer, there is a process that begins during the previous school year.
“You have to get 20 signatures from classmates, and then you have to find an administrator to approve your document. Then you send it to Mrs. McGinty, and then you get entered into a lottery system [where] she chooses 10 people,” Senior Class Officer Esther Lam said.
However, just being a class officer is not enough to actually work the graduation ceremony.
“The top five class officers who showed up most are given the chance to speak at graduation, four people call out the names and one person does the actual speech. Out of the five people, if you’re interested in doing a graduation speech, you send it to Mrs. McGinty, and then she’ll take out the names and send them to the administrators, and they’ll blind choose whoever the best speech was,” Lam said.
Those who do not work on graduation still have an important role to fill.
“Class officers who don’t necessarily participate in graduation run the senior honors assembly and speak at that event,” Theado said.
The senior honors assembly is another important point in the career of many seniors in addition to graduation.
“It was really cool seeing all our classmates getting honored for a bunch of different things, and seeing what everyone’s involved in,” Lam said.
In addition to the class officer speaker, there is a speech given by a member of the Cum Laude Society, as opposed to one given by a valedictorian as done at many schools.
“Valedictorian was done away with a long, long time ago, prior to me becoming an administrator. Valedictorian is essentially the person with the highest GPA in the class. So with Cum Laude you’re looking at the top tier of kids,” Theado said.
Theado also reflected on what he thought makes a meaningful and impactful graduation speech.
“I’ve witnessed a lot of different types of speakers, and I think what makes somebody good is if they’re passionate, if they’re reflective, they reflect on what has happened in their career, and they kind of motivate students towards the future,” Theado said.
In addition to multiple speakers, there are also student musicians who perform at graduation.
“Students will audition, so anyone who’s interested in performing at graduation will go to an audition, and then a panel of students and staff will make decisions on who would perform,” Theado said.
The class officers had a hard decision to make with lots of talented musicians auditioning.
We decided based on song choice and skill. So some songs were not exactly suited for graduation, so we kind of struck those out, and then some were just a little bit too long, but they were good. So we chose one that kind of hit the sweet spot for grabbing people’s attention,” Lam said.
One of the students selected to perform is senior Anthony Donahue.
“Me and Ken Bates are gonna be performing together. It’s probably gonna be a Beatles song. For my audition, I played “Yesterday” on piano, and for her audition, she played “Blackbird” on guitar,” Donahue said.
It was a long process of preparations for the audition for Donahue.
“I practiced a lot. My sister is in Symphonic Band, so I would ask her for help. And she’s a clarinet player, so she knows a lot about music. So I consulted her about how something should be played a certain way,” Donahue said.
Since it is complex, the process starts long in advance.
“It starts as soon as it ends. So we have to set the date, we have to get the venue and then we work with that. Then we get into the school year [and] we start working with the class officers. There’s a lot of planning and organization that happens, and that will go a year long,” Theado said.
