By Priscilla Le
Graduation. A ceremony to celebrate the culmination of 12 arduous years of traditional education. An all too important day to miss. But some people will have to.
I’m talking about the people who’ve supported their students until this crucial moment.
I’m talking about the number of graduation tickets a student is allowed to purchase.
There are four guaranteed tickets and three more that can be bought. The rest are sold on a first-come-first-serve basis at Senior Breakfast.
Seven grad tickets might seem plenty for a nuclear family, but factor in siblings, grandparents and other important members, and the most important event that has thus far occurred in a student’s life is cut off from the people that should be there to celebrate with their student.
Yes, we need some sort of limit on the number of people attending, but if people were fundamental in someone’s life, they should be able to be present for when they walk.
Thirty tickets, for example, would be superfluous, but enough tickets are needed so that a senior’s mom is able to watch their child graduate.
Sure when it comes down to it, there is no easy way to say who is more important in different students’ lives. A boss might be more important than an aunt and vice versa. But the number of tickets should reach an approachable limit, not follow the path of e^x.
There might not be any good solution to this problem, however. The stadium cannot support an infinite number of people, nor can we track ticket purchases successfully as students buy them off of each other. The principal solution would be the pathos argument, reliant on how the seniors themselves respond to this situation.
I implore you—do not take more than you need. You don’t need to invite every single person in your life. Record the ceremony and send it to those who aren’t (forgive me for my bluntness) important enough to be in-person for the real thing. If not, you might prevent those who do have those people in their lives to miss a vital experience. Don’t be that person.
