April, 2021
By Carlos Rivas, Staff Reporter
On Friday, June 11th at 7 p.m. the class of 2021 will be graduating at the Germania Insurance Amphitheater at Circuit of the Americas. While traditionally KAC graduation has happened at the Gregory Gym on the University of Texas campus, this year that was not possible due to crowd restrictions put in place at UT as a result of Covid-19.
Finding a location for this year’s graduation was a challenge. Initially, Mrs. Minde, our 12th-grade Assistant Principal, was told we could hold the ceremony at FC Bold’s soccer stadium on the COTA grounds. But the Germania Insurance Amphitheater will allow for social distancing.
Graduation is not going to be the same this year. Even though it is an outdoor location, that doesn’t mean there will be no restrictions. As Minde explained, “This also means that we will have to be really carefully about spacing people out and making sure they don’t hug, high five, or get too close to each other.” Each graduating student will be allowed to invite four guests, she said.
Some students of the class of 2021 expressed mixed emotions about this year’s graduation, especially the fact that there are so many restrictions that will be keeping us from interacting with those close to us. We won’t be able to celebrate graduation with hugs and bumps as usual. Two seniors, Jessica Retana and Maria Maldonado, said “To be honest, I don’t really care how it happens. I just want to receive my diploma. But I know it will be very different because of the virus.
“We will have extra rules and it will be managed way different,” they continued.
KAC is not the only school forced to hold its graduation outdoors this year. Many schools had to cancels all their plans and redo everything last minute because of Covid-19. This happened to KAC’s class of 2020, too, which held its graduation over Zoom. Because Minde did not have time to plan an in-person graduation for last year’s seniors, she decided to start planning way ahead the graduation for the class of 2021.
Even though our graduation won’t be like we expected–where we could spend the day hugging those close to us, where we wouldn’t have to wear a face mask and could see each other’s excited faces, where we could be right next to our friends laughing–the class of 2021 is still excited about our graduation. We’d rather have a graduation where we are outdoors, six feet away from each other with face masks than graduate over a computer.
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