Coronavirus strips seniors of Grad Bash, prom, graduation, but not Class of 2020 spirit | Opinion
Update: Yasmine Mezawi has decided to attend Florida International University, which has awarded her the full financial package she needed.
There won’t be an “opening” for the graduating Class of 2020 in the time of coronavirus.
No “new normal” can bring back the canceled Grad Bash of April, the mother of all field trips, the one you looked forward to from the time you entered high school as a freshman. All your friends packed into a bus and headed to Universal Orlando, where the park stays open just for seniors until 2 a.m.
No May prom to dance the night away with a special someone.
No stage to walk on and proudly accept your diploma to your family’s elation.
“Everything has been stripped from us,” says Yasmine Mezawi, senior class vice president at Miami Lakes Educational Center and yearbook editor-in-chief. “When I was young, I would see movies and dream about prom, about getting dressed up, and about the memories we would make. All the effort of my whole school career was going to be worth it for all that comes with senior year.”
The loss of these milestone moments has taken a backseat to the barrage of news about the deadly COVID-19 and the loss of life in the midst of a worldwide pandemic.
But these losses are no small thing and should be acknowledged.
For high school seniors who were looking forward to these days of celebration they are heartbreaking and disappointing, even more so for student leaders like Mezawi, 18, who worked hard to plan and fund-raise to make these seminal moments special for all her classmates.
The magnet school’s prom was scheduled for May 8 at the JW Marriott on Brickell Avenue. Many other schools chose the Roaring ‘20s because we’re at the launch point of a new decade, and the play on the year, 2020. But MLEC wanted to be different, Mezawi said, and students chose Arabian Nights to make the prom a feast of bright colors, culture, and dance.
Lots of fundraising sales were held to raise money, only to lose the $1,000 deposit. Same for the Universal trip and the $700 paid to save the date, says Mezawi, a class officer the last four years.
Also left in uncertainty to stay-at-home orders for nonessential businesses is the school yearbook, the Alpha Omega. At the last minute before the spring deadline, Mezawi went into the year-in-review pages and managed to get in the coronavirus crisis unfolding. How will the yearbook get sold and distributed after printing?
The students of The Harbinger, the school newspaper, also went to work retooling their March edition with impressive coverage of the outbreak on students’ lives as they adapted to distance learning and virtual communications.
#AloneTogether has become more than a hashtag; it’s a school mantra.
Coronavirus reality
“It’s like Groundhog Day every day. You get up and want it to be a different experience, but it’s not,” says Helena Castro, activities director at MLEC, last year recognized as best in the country by the prestigious group Magnet Schools of America.
“We have now had eight weeks of contemplating this reality,” Castro said. “The students don’t have a reference point for this level of disappointment. They didn’t live through 9/11. They’re still in a great place in life where they haven’t suffered a big loss or had to give anything up.”
Until now.
The students, Castro said, are going through the stages of grief, as are teachers and staff who’ve had to recon with their own life choices, personal and professional, to get through this terrible time for all of humanity.
“When you are a senior, you are working up to these crescendos and these seminal moments building up to graduation, and now we are not going to have that,” Castro said. “We’ll get past it, but it will always be with a tinge of sadness that they look back at this time.”
Virtual graduations
Earlier this week, Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said that schools could hold intimate graduations virtually, or postpone in-person graduations until people are cleared to be together, even if that’s months away.
It will take more than Miami-Dade’s school system, the fourth largest in the nation, to find innovative ways to recognize all of the graduating seniors’ accomplishments this unprecedented year.
“It’s challenging,” Castro said. “What we are embarking upon, no one has ever done.”
The rest of us, as a community, must join in, too, coming together on social media to celebrate students, to lift their spirits, with a massive wave of virtual shout-outs, messages of hope, and yes, donations when necessary, to make college dreams come true.
Mezawi, who wants to be a lawyer and got accepted at several universities around the country and in Florida, says it’s time to look toward the future.
“I had my moment of crying, and I got tired of repeating the same every day,” she said.
“What sucks even more is a second wave of this in the fall. Now, the beginning of my college life is being stripped away, too. It’s another obstacle we have to jump over — and move on. It’s the only way to look at it. We are going to college.”
Well said, applause.
She has narrowed her choices to Florida International University and the University of Central Florida “because money is an issue,” she said, as are the scary times. Like the prom dress she didn’t buy “because I’m a procrastinator,” she has delayed the decision to the last minute and is weighing all her options.
The coronavirus may have deprived seniors of Grad Bash, prom, a traditional graduation ceremony with all the gravitas of pomp and circumstance, but not of their Class of 2020 spirit.
Like the MLEC alma mater says: “As we pass through life, and we leave this school, there is one thing we’ll recall — that days we spent at Miami Lakes Ed were the very best of all.”
Let’s help all of our graduating seniors get to the future quicker by practicing social distancing and taking personal responsibility to contain the deadly virus in Miami, Florida’s epicenter.
Let’s celebrate the students, give them a big virtual party, loud and proud.
Congratulations, seniors!
Perhaps it may be for all the wrong reasons, but this is still a year you will never forget.
This story was originally published May 1, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
