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Graduation is Canceled but Our Applause is Not
To the High School Seniors of 2020:
We are all so sorry that the graduation ceremony that was planned has now been canceled or modified, given the strict quarantine orders our country is under. Your moment to be embraced by and to embrace the friends and teachers, counselors and coaches, and the proudest of parents who accompanied you on this journey is an incalculable loss that we can only imagine. You have, no doubt, had to count it among so many other disappointments in recent weeks. This is not the kind of history any of us hoped to be making.
A global pandemic certainly puts the bookends on this educational voyage for you, which, for so many of you, began with the shattering news of September 11. You were just beginning your formal education when, no doubt, televisions were turned on and swiftly turned off, when voices in hallways were hushed, when hands were grasped and names were read and thoughts and prayers were lifted. You carried your lunchboxes in backpacks often too big for your frames, into a world whose conflicts were often too complex to comprehend.
Yet, you have grown up and found channels through which you could explore this wildly evolving world. You have studied and created and synthesized data that no one could readily explain.You have shown greater tolerance and kindness toward diversity in…
