Gabby Calugay-Casuga
COVID-19 dashed plans for graduation ceremonies across Canada and the world. To adapt to the pandemic and the lockdowns it has caused, celebrations were postponed or cancelled entirely and moved online.
Many schools have chosen to postpone their convocation, but some feel that the traditional experience cannot be salvaged.
“It feels as though there’s a void where those ceremonies were,” Professor Shawna Dolansky said, who has been teaching at Carleton’s College of Humanities for a decade. “The sense of closure on my experience of the students and their experience of Carleton [is lost].”
Cydney Kane, who recently graduated with her juris doctor from Dalhousie University, said that even though her school has plans to recreate its traditional ceremony after the pandemic, she is disappointed.
“At first I was really sold on the idea [of crossing the stage]… but so much time has gone by and will have gone by when anything can happen,” she said. “All my classmates have dispersed. It’s almost like it won’t mean the same thing.”
The video celebration the university’s law school put together just wasn’t the same, Kane added.
“At the end our names scrolled through the screen,” she said. “But it’s not the same thing to see your name scroll across the screen as it is to walk across the stage.”
Loss of tradition
Skylar Lovell, who received her B.A. in English literature from the University of British Columbia this year, said that her online graduation was also disappointing.
“While most graduation ceremonies are personalized, this one was not,” she said. “Our names were not read out loud by the UBC president and there was no chance to get a photo with your friends in your cap and gown.”
“Honestly, it doesn’t feel like I’ve even graduated,” Lovell added.
Students at other schools are also grappling with the loss of traditions.
Melissa Young, a recent graduate of mechanical engineering at Queen’s University said that leaving her program without engaging in school traditions makes it hard to feel as if she completed her degree.
“The biggest cancellation for me was our Iron Ring ceremony,” Young said. “All engineers who graduate in Canada get a ring … For a lot of engineers the Iron Ring ceremony is more important than graduation.”
Despite the frustrations among the class of 2020, some graduates are trying to put this moment into perspective.
“Although we are frustrated that we could not spend this wonderful moment of our lives celebrating together, we have to remember that there is a bigger picture out there and that everything happens for a reason,” Lovell said.
Lana El Sanyoura, a class of 2020 graduate of the University of Toronto’s bachelor of computer science program said that the cancellation of events was not all bad.
“[Graduation] is not going to be perfect because nothing is perfect. There is the good and the bad in everything and I enjoyed celebrating at home with my family.”
Sarah Williscraft, a 2020 graduate from Carleton University’s journalism and humanities program added that she feels ok missing graduation.
“It’s all just ceremony,” she said. “At the end of the day, we’ll all get jobs and it will all be fine.”
Jordan Gray, a recent graduate of global and international studies at Carleton University, had a similar message.
“You would think that because there is so much going on, we would kind of just fade to the background — I would join the class of 2020, we would just leave and that would be that,” Gray said.
Gray spoke with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at a virtual commencement at Carleton for all Canadian graduates in the class of 2020.
“I was not expecting the very real effort to acknowledge the class of 2020… It’s pretty exceptional that we haven’t been lost in this time.”
He said the shared struggle as Canadians adjust to the jarring changes caused by COVID-19 lockdowns has united graduates in a way that may not have been possible otherwise.
“This is really the sum of my undergraduate career,” Gray said. “It did not happen as I expected it to happen, you just take it as it comes to you.”
“We will never forget that we graduated in 2020.”
Featured image by Spencer Colby.
