Seniors will be celebrating their graduation on campus after all.
And everyone is invited.
This was not initially believed to be the case last month when seniors and their parents received an email from the school informing them that their graduation couldn’t be fully hosted on campus in June.
The email, dated Nov. 13, stated that because of construction of Cal High football field’s home bleachers, seating capacity would be reduced from 2,800 to 1,600.
But three days later administrators reversed course and said another solution was found, allowing seniors to have their graduation on campus without limiting the number of family and friends.
School administrators initially proposed three possibilities to address the problem of having about 1,200 fewer seats for family and friends to attend the graduation ceremonies.
The first two options kept graduation at Cal but limited the number of guests students could invite to two or four. The third option was to have the ceremony take place at another school in the district.
Linked in the email was a Google form allowing students to share which option they preferred. Many students, parents and staff didn’t find any of the options appealing.
“You can’t limit the guests,” chemistry teacher Jack Sarkany said. “When I did graduation for my oldest, we [had] a minimal family and there were still six people who came.”
The option to have graduation take place at another school was unappealing to seniors, especially since they couldn’t have their eighth grade promotion in person because schools were shut down during COVID-19 pandemic.
“We couldn’t even have our eighth grade graduation,” senior Eduardo Campos said. “And now we can’t even graduate at our school, it’s kind of sad.”
The fact that the first two options limited the number of guests seemed unfair to Campos because he wanted to bring all the people that support him to his graduation.
Some students, however, were indifferent to all three of the proposals.
“I don’t really specifically care where I graduate, as long as there is a ceremony and as long as I could have my parents there,” senior Kyle Lim said.
On Nov. 16, Cal sent another email to seniors and parents announcing that with help from the district, the school made arrangements to host the graduation ceremony on campus with no guest limit.
The school is now just providing a sufficient amount of chairs on the football field since no one can sit in the home bleachers.
“[The survey] wasn’t a vote so it wasn’t going to be whatever families and seniors pick,” Cal Principal Demetrius Ball said during the press conference with The Californian. “We opened it up to get feedback.”
Ball said the construction project that is causing this issue has been coming for years. The project entails rebuilding the home bleachers and press box, which is expected to take about 10 months to complete. The decision to start construction last month instead of after graduation was based on a time frame the district provided the school.
“We did this early enough so that we could adjust,” Mr. Ball said. “[Graduation] is going to look weird with construction, but that’s what seniors and their families want and I’m happy that we’re able to make it happen.”
The response of students advocating for themselves in this situations has been viewed as a positive by many.
Social studies teacher Sarah Eddings, who mostly teaches seniors, said she noticed that many of her students were disappointed with the initial graduation proposals. In her class, Eddings discussed the situations with her students, who clearly expressed how they felt. Eddings said this made her proud.
“This is exactly how people should have responded,” Eddings said. “Just like you would to a government policy, you ask questions that’s what we as Americans should be doing.”
Lim said students expressed themselves well in this situation. He believes that this was a good example of the school adapting to the needs of the students.
“It’s good that [the administration] listened to what the students were saying instead of giving people an ultimatum,” senior Meghana Dingari said.
But Dingari wishes the school looked into how to host a full, traditional graduation before sending the email as it could’ve avoided the fierce backlash.
