This week it was announced that Bluefield High will be once again celebrating graduation, "pandemic style". Even with no gathering restrictions in place, the school has still chosen to divide the class of 22 into cohorts and host multiple smaller graduation ceremonies, as opposed to one larger ceremony. This announcement came as a shock to many students. Class of 22 has been yet to experience a covid free year of high school, and never will. But with public health restrictions lifting, we had assumed that would mean normal grad activities, such as the grad ceremony. Unfortunately, we were wrong. The school has yet to provide valid reasoning for why they're choosing this style of grad and to be fair, I don't think there is one. Some may argue that the "pandemic-style" grad is easier for parents and grandparents because it's less time spent for them sitting in the crowd. But our graduation ceremony is about us, it's for us. My parents and grandparents already graduated from high school, they got their proper graduation ceremony. Now it's our turn. As a graduating class, we've worked together for the past 12 years to bring us all to this moment. We got here together and we deserve to graduate together. When the ceremonies are divided into cohorts students are encouraged to gather their friend groups to make sure they all get into the same ceremony before the capacity limit is reached. This forces students to often decide between what friends they want to walk across the stage with, creating mass amounts of anxiety for many. While some students will be busy gathering friends to attend grad with, there will also be countless students who won't get invited into a group, or don't have any close friends they can ask to sign up with. Ultimately leaving these students out in the cold, feeling very lonely, and making the thought of graduating high school less and less appealing.

I encourage all grads, parents, guardians, and future grads, to sign this petition in hopes to bring back proper graduation ceremonies for this year, all the years to come. Thank you.