Bethel Plan­ning Mod­i­fied Grad­u­a­tion Cer­e­monies

MISHAWAKA – It’s no sur­prise to any­one that COVID-19 has dis­rupted the lives of just about every­one on the planet, some more se­verely than oth­ers. La­bor­ers have suf­fered from lack of in­come, med­ical pro­fes­sion­als have been work­ing prac­ti­cally non-stop to help the sick and stu­dents have had to grin and bear a com­plete re­struc­tur­ing of the ed­u­ca­tional process on the fly. Amid this mess, no one can be blamed for ask­ing for a lit­tle nor­malcy or tra­di­tion. 

That is why the grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mony for the Class of 2021 is so im­por­tant. Nat­u­rally, there have been sev­eral ad­just­ments to keep the event safe for all in­volved, but the or­ga­niz­ers have done their ab­solute best to en­sure that the stu­dents and their fam­i­lies get to en­joy their spe­cial day. 

For starters, the date of the grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mony is still May 1. There will be an ear­lier cer­e­mony for adult and grad­u­ate stu­dents at 10:30 a.m., with the rest of the stu­dents hav­ing their grad­u­a­tion at 5 p.m. the same day. Be­tween the two cer­e­monies, the gym will be thor­oughly cleaned, re­duc­ing the risk of con­tact trac­ing. The num­ber of tick­ets al­low­ing stu­dents to in­vite those they would like at the cer­e­mony has been re­duced from eight per stu­dent to two per stu­dent. Each “fam­ily group” must have six feet be­tween them, and there will be no fac­ulty at the ac­tual cer­e­mony. 

On the evening of April 30, there will be a cer­e­mony for the Class of 2020, since they were un­able to have a cer­e­mony last year. Sched­ul­ing for this event will look sim­i­lar: walk­ing, the same grad­u­a­tion speech, and as much so­cial dis­tanc­ing as pos­si­ble. 

There will be a re­hearsal of the event in the Ever­est-Rohrer Au­di­to­rium an hour be­fore the real deal, and the grad­u­ates will leave from there and walk the cam­pus. In case of rain, the re­hearsal will take place in the Good­man gym, and the stu­dents will have to forego walk­ing. 

Af­ter all the fes­tiv­i­ties in the gym, stu­dents will be able to spread out across cam­pus to see their pro­fes­sors. The dif­fer­ent de­grees will have sta­tions set up all over with flags to de­note which is which. This will al­low the stu­dents and their fam­i­lies to con­gre­gate and talk with the pro­fes­sors out­side, fur­ther de­creas­ing the risk of spread­ing COVID-19. Un­for­tu­nately, in the case of rain, this part of the cer­e­mony might not hap­pen, as there would be no other way to keep it so­cially dis­tanced. 

“The main thing is, we want to cel­e­brate in honor of the grad­u­ates in the best way that we can with the re­stric­tions that we have,” Reg­is­trar Jeanne Fox said. “We know this is im­por­tant to them and we want to cel­e­brate.”