Imagine graduating from high school this June, feeling accomplished, excited, and perhaps a little emotional because everything you’ve done leads to the very moment you receive the diploma and set off for bigger things.
For years, you’ve dedicated hours and hours to extracurriculars, which have changed the course of your life–maybe even making you realize you want to pursue a career in it. The world is becoming your oyster, but the one thing you can’t do is wear the cords and stoles that symbolize all your hard work and the meaningful experiences you’ve had so far.
This is the dilemma current seniors at Liberty are facing.
The school’s administration has decided that this year, graduating seniors will not be allowed to wear activity cords, with exceptions to culture, GPA, and community service.
Given that this decision was made without the input of the very students it impacts, Liberty’s journalism class–a classroom of graduating seniors and future seniors–put into words the meaning of cords to their graduation experience.
“Graduation is about celebrating the past 13 years of your life. Putting significant restraint on what you’re allowed to celebrate can be unpleasant,” one editor said. “There’s so much more that went into high school than just school or academics. Now, we’re not allowed to have those formative things visually displayed.”
Students suggest that cords not only commemorate our valuable, memorable journeys through adolescence but also acknowledge how our activities shape the futures we lead in adulthood.
“So much stress is put on extracurriculars. If that’s one of the deciding factors to getting into college, why can’t we acknowledge the many things we did?” one editor said.
“Personally, my college is being funded by athletics, and a stole would showcase the sport that got me there,” one editorial board member said.
In addition to expressing the sentimental value of cords, the Patriot Press staff also evaluated the new cord policy’s effectiveness in achieving equity.
“The reasoning behind this decision is that low-income students sometimes don’t have the opportunity to do extracurriculars or have other responsibilities. Therefore, we’d be alienating them,” one editorial board member said. “However, at the same time, if you were that student, if all students got their cords taken away, you’d feel bad.”
Equity is characterized by how it recognizes the unique circumstances of each individual, as opposed to equality, which treats everyone the same. If the administrations aims to promote true equity among its students, still, the solution is not for all graduates to look the same.
In fact, to be more equitable, there should be more consideration for the individual circumstances of students, such as those who are still dedicated to activities despite their socio-economic status.
“A lot of students make sacrifices to indulge in their extracurriculars, and now they’re not getting a cord for it,” one editor said.
Therefore, taking away activity cords and making every graduate wear the same amount of cords actually fails in recognizing the diverse and unique experiences each student had during their time at Liberty.
“Limiting students to only having two possible cords reduces the graduating class to this homogenous blob of blue gowns,” one editor said. “Everyone’s so different, and that’s cool.”
“Uniformity at graduation doesn’t mean equity. It’s not being more fair to anyone else,” one staff writer said. “I don’t get to tell or show everyone the cool experience I had during high school. Even if I don’t have as many cords, I know it doesn’t make my experiences worth any less.”
Ultimately, the Patriot Press has concluded that the new graduation cord policy, which is supposed to advocate for students, actually fails to address the opinions of the student body and achieve the equity that the administration seeks.
