Hello, my name is Cristina Buttler. I am a Level 4 registered nurse student at Charity School of Nursing. It has been a wild two years during nursing school. Nothing ever prepares you enough for such a rigorous program. You have to have a lot of passion and dedication to the nursing profession to be able to survive. 

I began my journey at Charity School of Nursing in Fall 2019. It was a stressful time trying to acclimate to a different type of learning. Little did I know it was about to get 10x more stressful. In spring 2020, my 2nd semester at Charity, COVID-19 hit causing the world-wide shutdown. Never in my life did I ever expect this to happen. It was such a scary time for nursing students. All lectures and clinicals turned 100% virtual. Nursing school is hard itself; I could not process the thought of it being online. There were so many thoughts running through my mind. How will I learn this material by myself online? How will I pass having an exam once a week? How will I grow with no type of clinical experience? Will I become a sufficient nurse? Everything felt like the unknown.  

Charity School of Nursing is unique. It is not your typical nursing school. There is a lot of variety seen at Charity which makes it special. Not everyone was born and raised in Louisiana. Our age ranges from 20s to mid-upper 60s. Most of us have family and children. The majority of us have to work full time while going to school. We all have unique stories which lead us to Charity, but all have the mutual goal of becoming a “Charity Nurse” which holds high standards in Louisiana.  We all walk in our Charity uniforms with dignity. We all pride about the program we belong to. We all quickly become a family. We are with each other more than we are with our own families. We care about one another so much. Instead of making it a competition against each other, we hold each other up, we help one another, we make sure no one drowns. We stand strong as a team. We are Charity STRONG.  

Fast forward a year, we all survived. We made it to LEVEL 4: the final semester of nursing school. We stayed focused, motivated, and determined to keep pushing forward. We put in extra work to make up the lost time we had during the COVID shutdown. We all supported one another to make sure no one fell behind. We have surpassed every obstacle that has been thrown at us. We are finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, and what a feeling it is!!!  

I am writing this to advocate for my graduating class as a whole. I know we all poured our blood, sweat, and tears to make it to the finish line. We sacrificed our time away from our family and friends to make it here. We spent an immense amount of time at our desks studying from the moment we wake up to the moment we lay our heads to rest. We were just informed that our pinning ceremony would be virtual via a YouTube link. Our class as a whole felt disappointed. We felt like we could have been recognized for our accomplishment’s way better than a YouTube link. We believe there are plenty of other options that could make an in-person pinning ceremony happen. Being a nursing student, we were drilled to always advocate for what is right, so I have thought of a few ideas of how we could possibly make this work: 

1. We can have a socially distanced ceremony in an outside parish who is in Phase 3. Possibly Jefferson parish? Possibly at the Alario Center? In phase 3, the Governor of LA John Bel Edwards stated, “ Gatherings in indoor event halls are limited to 50% capacity, up to 250 people”. Luckily, our current graduating class only has under 200 students in it.  

2. We can have an outdoor socially distanced pinning ceremony with minimal or no guest. If no guests are allowed we could possibly live stream or record the ceremony for our family to watch.  

3. We can have 4 separate pinning ceremonies. Each Team (approx. 30-40 students) can have their own pinning ceremony to reduce the amount of people present. The ceremony can be streamed/recorded for our peers and families to watch. 

4. We can have the ceremony at the City Park Campus. The theatre can be decorated with a Charity School of Nursing backdrop. Each section (8 students each) can be separated in different classrooms/areas waiting for their sections turn. Each section can be escorted to the theatre and be pinned section by section to limit the amount of people in one area. This can also be streamed/recorded for our peers/family to watch.  
 

I believe any of these ideas would obey COVID-19 regulations and give us the recognition we deserve. Every single Charity student has worked so hard to make it out of such a rigorous program. Our children have watched us work so hard and deserve to watch us be recognized for our hard work. I know I have shared a small portion of my story on why this pinning ceremony means so much to me and I know my fellow peers all have their stories as well. I want to advocate for what I believe in and I hope this petition can help my classmates and I get the proper pinning ceremony we deserve. Thank you. 

-May 2021 RN Graduating Class