Pandemic and Circumstance
JACKSON TWP — The band played the “Pomp and Circumstance” marching song as Seneca Valley students, mostly maskless, proceeded to their seats on the field donning mortarboards and black graduation gowns.
NexTier Stadium's bleachers were filled with proud family members who sat side-by-side with relatives of the other students.
To an observer pulled from 2019, nothing had changed. But for Seneca Valley's Class of 2021, it was a shockingly normal graduation ceremony after tumultuous junior and senior years.
And for Superintendent Tracy Vitale, the change — from masks, social distancing and online or blended learning to a packed commencement ceremony — was not lost on her. As the country and state, reeling from the pandemic for more than a year, loosens restrictions and gradually returns to normal, so, too, will her students begin their next chapter.
“Does it not feel good?” Vitale asked, later adding, “I encourage you, right now, to lean into this moment.”
The nearly 600 newly minted Seneca Valley alumni, sitting in folding chairs for about 90 minutes, listened to the typical graduation platitudes — the world is your oyster; the challenges of the past 13 years will form how you face future challenges; anything is possible, if you put your mind to it — with perhaps a greater appreciation for the deeper meaning behind them than they may have without the challenges of COVID-19.“I know this isn't the senior year any of us want,” student Zachary Patrick Donaldson, who was selected for a graduation address, said. “But maybe it's the one we need.”
Donaldson said the events of the past year — the challenges of COVID-19 restrictions, turning bedrooms into classrooms when COVID-19 waves forced the school online, and nevertheless triumphing through those — made this year's graduates more mature and ready for the future's challenges than they may have otherwise been.Vitale echoed those sentiments, saying students should take what they learned the past 13 years, and especially during the past year, and apply it to their future.While high school and commencement are a typical epic novel of sorts, Vitale said this year's graduates can put the proverbial feather of COVID-19 challenges in their cap as another building block upon which their futures will form.“I have been amazed at the resolve shown by the Seneca Valley Class of '21,” Vitale said.As roughly 590 students and their families plodded out from the district's football field, they had something in common with the rest of the country: One challenge is over, and it's time to face the next.
