The COVID-19 pandemic forced many schools to reconsider how many people they allowed on campus for events like graduation. One popular solution was limiting the number of guests and it looks like Woodward has decided to follow suit. The administration recently announced that seniors can bring no more than three guests to commencement and the student body is pretty divided.
Furthermore, this is a tough situation because graduating from high school marks a very important milestone in a student’s life, so naturally lots of family and friends will want to come and express their support and pride.
“I’m really upset about the situation,” Sithini Cheese ‘24 said . “I have a lot of senior friends and since they can only bring four people I probably won’t be able to go since their family will take priority.”
However, the administration said this executive decision is a necessary precaution.
“There are around 250 seniors, so if each student brought three people, that’s an additional 750 people which might violate the CDC’s recommendations,” Dean Jacobs said . “Also, lack of parking has been a huge issue in the past and there have been some unfortunate instances that stemmed from families parking outside of allocated areas. For example, a few years ago, a family parked their car in front of someone’s house and their one-eyed cat took over the wheel and crashed the car through their front door. So, Woodward has been trying to take strides to ensure incidents like that don’t occur again.”
However, Woodward does stream graduation on WALive, so anyone who was hoping to support the class of ‘23 on this special day can still tune in.
But, in spite of these few obstacles, the class of ‘23 is still fortunate enough to have an in-person graduation, a luxury some students never got to experience.
“It sucks, but at the end of the day, I’m happy that we can even have a graduation,” Jack Jillson ‘23 said . “Some of the classes before us didn’t get to enjoy that privilege, so I’m extremely appreciative of what we can get.”
