“I really wanted my parents to see me with this diploma and cap and gown,” said Nahins, 31, a New York native who is about to graduate with a degree in creative writing. “I really wanted to do it for them and I imagine a lot of students feel the same way.” »
It is indeed a bittersweet moment for the Class of 2024, whose high school graduations were forced to Zoom by the pandemic. From Boston to California, many are grieving the upheaval of these fleeting moments in their academic lives and the fact that they once again bear the brunt of international events beyond their control.
Protests against the bloodshed in Israel and Gaza, which began at Columbia nearly two weeks ago, have sparked a nationwide movement of dissent on campuses. More than 900 students were arrested.
College administrators are reexamining admissions programs in the wake of heightened security concerns, working to find ways to respect students’ rights to free speech while ensuring safety. Even the ceremonies that take place will probably be more discreet than in previous years. At the University of Michigan, for example, graduates were told that banners would not be allowed and that protests could only take place in designated areas.
One institution has already announced a cancellation, and the news Thursday evening from the University of Southern California sparked anger and dismay. USC decision to cancel its May 10 main launch — an event that usually draws more than 65,000 people — follows an earlier decision to pull the commencement speech of its 2024 valedictorian, Asna Tabassum, who has publicly supported the Palestinians.
“I have never felt more discouraged, disappointed and, frankly, furious,” said Georgia Nolan, 21, a real estate development major at USC. “As a class, we did not graduate from high school and so receiving this news feels like a slap in the face. A shadow has been cast over what should be two of the most important milestones in our young adult lives.
Alex Ornes, 22, a theater major, said the university’s latest move felt like “the path of least resistance.”
“It’s like the school is saying, ‘Oh, are you protesting us?’ We’re just going to cancel everything,” she said.
Ceremonies for USC’s various colleges are still scheduled, although graduates are limited to four tickets for their family members. Ornes has six family members coming to town to graduate, which means two of them will have to watch from a distance as she walks across the stage.
“I’m disappointed, of course, but there’s a part of me that thinks none of this matters in the grand scheme of things, compared to what’s happening in Palestine,” she said. .
Others share his ambivalence – or see an opportunity.
Jackie Campos, 21, a sustainability studies major at the University of Texas at Austin, sees both the pandemic and the protests between Israel and Gaza as less of an imposition than a moment for her cohort of students to take things in hand. In high school, she was part of a group that managed a pandemic response. This month, she joined protests on her campus in support of the Palestinians, which ended with a mass arrest of 57 people on Wednesday.
“We are not afraid to show our power,” she said at one such protest last week. “Ultimately, youth-led movements will lead to change.”
Campos surrendered in part because of “excessive” and “unconstitutional” police repression. (Within days, the county attorney dropped all charges, citing deficiencies in documents submitted by police.) The show of force prompted her to focus more on continuing the protests — as well as resigning from UT President Jay Hartzell. in the crackdown — than on whether the university would hold the in-person commencement on May 11.
“We have to keep showing up,” she said.
At Columbia on Friday, just yards from the ongoing protest encampment on the Main Lawn, students posed for photos in their blue graduation gowns on the library steps. Some were worried about the fate of their graduation ceremony, which would be held at the same premises on May 15. Rumors and theories were rife. Would an agreement be reached in time to avoid a cancellation? Would the ceremony be moved to Yankee Stadium or an off-campus location?
The class of 24 experienced disruptions long before they were born, said Teji Vijayakumar, 21, who is about to earn a bachelor’s degree in computer science and visual arts. The student body president and her classmates — members of what’s known as Generation Z — came into the world in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, which she says contributed to increased anxiety collective.
“It’s striking how little normality there is in our lives,” she said. In high school, “we started with the election of Donald Trump, then mass shootings, Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, and when we’re about to enter the real world, covid hits. We start university and Roe v. Wade is overturned, and now we are here.
“Here” means a continuous vigil under the tent on the Butler Library lawn, where students demand the school renounce its financial ties to Israel. The protesters, with scarves obscuring their faces, prepared snacks next to a fence dotted with red, green and black Palestinian flags and signs reading “Demilitarize Education” and “Justice for Genocide.”
“I think my age group is kind of used to it,” Vijayakumar said. “It would be different if you had a truly idyllic childhood. It doesn’t look like what it is. Our class is used to rolling with the punches, and that’s a good thing.
University officials said Friday that negotiations with protesters were ongoing and their goal was “a safe resolution to this crisis.” They did not say whether graduation plans were on hold.
Nahins, a veteran who flew drones overseas for the U.S. Air Force, is ready to wrap up what he calls one of the most difficult years of his life. He has long considered Colombia a refuge from post-traumatic stress diagnosed during his military service. Then came the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 – in which militants killed around 1,200 people and took hostages, provoking an Israeli counterattack that, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, caused more than 34,000 dead in the Gaza Strip. Like other Jewish students on campus, Nahins says he has since suffered anti-Semitic insults.
He suffered his first panic attack in two years last Tuesday and coped by taking deep breaths and hugging his emotional support retriever, Ghost.
“Since October 7, things have not been the same,” Nahins said Friday. He heard protesters chant “death to America” and “death to Zionists” and saw others, their faces obscured by kaffiyeh scarves, filming him as he stood alongside counterprotesters and waved an American flag on the steps of the library across from the tent encampment. .
There were other, more painful losses. Nahins and a friend planned to travel to a conflict zone like Israel or Ukraine after graduation and file war dispatches, Ernest Hemingway style. But the friend walked away emotionally after the Israeli attack on an aid group’s food convoy in March, which left seven aid workers dead. Then Nahins saw that his friend had posted a photo of the bombed aid car on Facebook and wrote: “Invade Israel. Erase it from the map.
Stunned, Nahins texted his friend: “Do you think Israel should be wiped off the map? »
He has become closer with other friends, some of whom are veterans like him.
“The positive side is you really find out who your friends are in a battle like this, with a near war zone on campus,” he said. “In a twisted way, I’m kind of grateful.”
Hennessy-Fiske reported from Austin. Kyle Melnick and Joyce Koh in New York, Kim Bellware in Chicago and Hannah Natanson in Washington contributed to this report.
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