At the 93rd annual commencement ceremony in New Paltz, nearly 150 high school students flipped their tassels from one side to the other as they crossed Floyd Patterson Field. The brutal heat had broken just a day before, and for once summer rains did not force relocation to the SUNY campus.
Social studies teacher Albert Cook, who was again invited to address this year’s graduating class, encouraged them to take care of themselves, look for ways to turn challenges into advantages, and to think critically about everything they do. Depression and anxiety are understandable given the state of the world, Cook said, and given the fact that these are students who survived the first worldwide pandemic in a century. That pandemic forced them to spend well over a year shut away from most of their friends, but as digital natives they transformed that challenge into new ways to use the power of the internet to change the world. The confluence of digital existence and strained political discourse makes applying the skills of critical thinking all the more important, Cook warned: “Your sources are infinite, but they are not curated.” Students were encouraged to talk to real people, verify that thought leaders are actually educated in their area of expertise, and to check multiple sources on any topic.
The teacher also addressed parents of the class of 2025 directly. New Paltz faculty and staff spent time with their children for ten months out of the year, sometimes for as much as eight or nine hours a day. “It makes me tremble with the sacredness of that trust,” Cook said, while also acknowledging, “I’m sure you’re glad we had them.”
While Cook acknowledged the implicit trauma of the coronavirus lockdowns, neither of the student speakers mentioned the pandemic at all. That’s the first time that this collective experience was not referenced at a New Paltz graduation since the March, 2020 shutdown of schools and subsequent switch to online learning.
Student representative Jiho Son gave an address in lieu of Brian Tierney, as the salutatorian was not in attendance. Son asked classmates, “What do you regret?” and waxed nostalgic about errors in judgement growing up, including procrastinating on assignments and uttering unkind words. “We all have some,” Son said. “They are easier to see in hindsight, but life must be lived forward.” Son followed up with, “Do you regret your time at New Paltz? I certainly do not.”
The class valedictorian, Charlie DePoala, opened with a recollection of a night of stalking during the game of “senior assassin” that was being played with classmates for a $500 prize. DePoala stalked the assigned quarry to the swim team banquet, and let loose with water guns to result in “children screaming and a drenched Ella — or so I thought.” Ella’s friends claimed that the volley had missed, and when Jiho Son as a game referee reviewed the video evidence, Son made a determination of “water contact unclear.” Depoala took this as a lesson into the difficulty of ascertaining objective truth: two groups claimed to have seen something very different, and the “evidence had dried up.”
“In a world of objective truth and subjected perceptions,” DePoala observed, “with limited information you can’t always find the truth.” In high school, “We’ve had to develop tools to combat unclear information and different perspectives.”
The school’s principal, Samuelle Simms, spoke about holding this particular class with special regard. These were the students who entered high school just a couple of weeks after Simms took the job, making this the first class to have a complete high school experience under this administration.
Before beginning to hand out diplomas, Superintendent Stephen Gratto promised no long speech, joking, “Next year, Dr. Simms, I’d like to go first.”
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