Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

The year 2020 will be defined by COVID-19. During this time we have come to accept inconveniences small and large, but the loss of high school and college commencements is heartbreaking.
Normally, graduating seniors would be preparing for graduation. Sadly, due to the current dictates of social distancing, there will be no ceremonies jam-packed with family and friends followed by well-wishing on campus fields, in school gyms, and in other venues.
Some schools are organizing drive-through diploma cover pickups and virtual ceremonies slated to be live-streamed online or broadcast as videos on select media. Locally, Carter County high school graduations will be held at the Stateline Drive-In.
Many thanks to local and area school boards for embracing innovative ways to celebrate the class of 2020, and to school staffers for making them happen.
With schools across the state closed since mid-March, seniors have been denied many of the much-anticipated events and traditions that precede graduation. Concerts, theatrical productions, and sport seasons were canceled. There were no proms, no yearbook signing sessions. Such festivities mark an important milestone. They are the moments and memories of life.
What the current pandemic cannot take away from you: the education you’ve earned and the education you’ll earn going forward.
Denied the ability to walk across a stage and accept your hard-earned diploma is akin to a football team playing all season, enduring tough losses but enough wins to make it to the championship game, only to be told the championship game has been canceled.
Seniors, your big game has been canceled. We won’t try to sugarcoat it by saying “You still earned a diploma” or “No one remembers the commencement speeches anyway.”
Because graduations aren’t about speeches, mortar board hats, surprise guests or even diplomas. They’re about sitting with classmates one last time.
Many of you have been together since kindergarten. You’ve seen each other excel; become a standout in football, baseball, or basketball; fall in love for the first time; get your first car. You may not all like each other, but you’re a team.
Now an important good-bye ritual is gone, and those words you’ve rehearsed in your heads, the ones thanking that teacher or coach who went the extra mile, may never get spoken.
Certainly, the graduation day you and your parents pictured for you will look very different, but not even COVID-19 can steal your pride or that of your parents.
This year’s seniors won’t be remembered for what they were denied, but for what they endured.
In future commencement addresses, speakers should say: “Be like the Class of 2020. They pushed aside fear and doubt and did what had to be done. For them, making sacrifices for the larger good wasn’t just an abstract idea. It was their senior year.”
High school graduation is not the end of the obstacles. Before the pandemic forced much of the economy to shut down, high school and college students poised to graduate this year could have expected to enter into a U.S. job market ranked among the strongest in recent decades. Now, facing the possibility of a recession worse than that touched off by the 2008 financial crisis, many are rethinking plans.
Higher-ed enrollment typically rises during recessions. Among other factors, income given up because an individual is in school instead of working is lower than normal. This time around, though, many would-be students don’t want to make a decision about fall enrollment until they know whether campuses will reopen — or operate largely online.
Whatever the determination, the Class of 2020 already has a distinction like no other. Its members have dealt with circumstances unlike those of any other graduating class since World War II. We expect the lessons learned will prove invaluable down the road. Congratulations to them all.