For a snapshot of our town’s culture, you can’t beat high school graduation.
It’s arguably the town’s happiest night, marking at least partial completion if not outright success at the most important thing we do around here – raise and educate young people.
How we choose to celebrate is constantly evolving, providing a reflection of who we are and what we value.
Thirty-five years ago, commencement was a staid affair with an out-of-town guest speaker famous in a small way – Alaska’s lieutenant governor, perhaps – followed by a long scholarship ceremony where one or two students walked away with most of the loot.
The big winners were the smartest kids who also were popular and attached to the right families, so the ceremony often resembled a coronation. The night’s three speeches were soaring and long and intended to inspire. Maybe a few grads tossed their mortarboards at the finale.
Change came first to the scholarship derby, a showboating opportunity every outfit in town wanted in on. By the time an annual cash award was being made to the student least likely to succeed and Lynn Canal Conservation was handing out a check to a pimply kid dedicated to saving the world from humans, the gala was over. The scholarship ceremony moved to a separate school assembly.
By then, a party atmosphere started stealing the spotlight, including pranks. Students in one class, on receiving their diplomas from the school board president, each furtively pressed a marble into his palm. Another class, during the recessional, pulled giant water guns from beneath their gowns and fired away at families in the bleachers.
It was the town’s most tragic school shooting, knock on wood.
The school administration tried to clamp down and return some pomp to the circumstance, but it wasn’t to be. Electric guitars showed up during student performances, popular teachers replaced small-time celebrities as guest speakers and student politics crept into festivities.
Messages clashed. A devout valedictorian blessed the crowd moments before a classmate sang John Lennon’s “Imagine,” admonishing organized religion. A commencement speaker pontificating on the beauty of capitalism was followed by a salutatorian hoping that at future reunions classmates wouldn’t judge each other by financial success. At a party of hippies and rednecks, who would expect kumbaya?
With the scholarship derby gone, commencement became less about individual honors and more about sharing the love. Did we become less achievement-oriented, or were we just ready to loosen up? Inclusion became the thing.
Student speakers abandoned soaring rhetoric and embraced a pattern of naming and articulating each classmate’s “special gift,” even gifts not abundantly evident. Guest speakers, now exclusively teachers – some giving repeat performances – hashed up distant memories of the graduates as tykes. Proud parents arrived with cheering sections of out-of-town relatives, matching T-shirts, and enlarged, head-shot photos of Little Johnny.
With entertainment in ascendance, crowd attention moved to student music performances. Out went reliance on ethereal choral pieces and in came sassy solos, some akin to Reno lounge acts. It was “Haines High’s Got Talent,” with the gym bleachers serving as applause-o-meter.
Informality led to hooting and hollering and mortarboards flying as though everyone had graduated West Point summa cum laude.
No matter. What redeems graduation and what will always redeem it are singular moments of triumph, humor and affection. Disabled students struggling up to the podium to receive their diplomas, their classmates cheering them on. A sports coach wondering aloud how he became guest speaker, as he still lived in an apartment above his parent’s garage. A graduate’s dad stepping out of the bleachers impromptu during a song performance to dance with his daughter in front of the whole town.
Graduation is Haines unvarnished and emotions unscripted. It’s as joyous and genuine as we get.
When a car parade down Main Street was added to Tuesday’s social-distanced ceremony, some parents suggested adding the parade to future commencements. Why not? Like rockets aimed at distant planets, our young people need all the booster fuel they can get. A party that gives them a bit more momentum can’t hurt.