After eight years, a cap and gown graduation tradition at Brooks Secondary School is changing, and a student grad commitee decision has been met with mixed reaction.
A student vote of the grad committee determined that this year’s ceremony will be smaller, caps and gowns will not be worn and students will no longer be presented with a diploma on stage. Some parents and students said they will miss the former traditions of the event, according to Brooks vice-principal Jennifer Kennedy.
“The cap and gown came in because we wanted to formalize the achievements of grads and to say, ‘You actually made it,’” said Kennedy. “We’re still having an evening where we’ll be recognizing the achievements of our students. They just won’t be in cap and gown. The whole community is not going to be there and it will be in a small venue.”
Max Cameron Theatre will be the likely choice, with its 400-seat capacity compared to hundreds more in Hap Parker Arena. The separate grand ceremony, more commonly known as the grand march, will still take place at the arena.
For the class of 2017, Kennedy said something had to give with the cap and gown ceremony. After presenting options, students on the grad committee “put their heads down and their hands up,” said Kennedy, and the traditional grand march spectacle won out.
One problem with the previous cap and gown was scheduling. When it started, the event ran in conjunction with the grad ceremony, with cap and gown held Friday night and the grand march on Saturday. The dates came before the end of the school year and report cards.
This year the ceremony will be on June 29. Students will not receive the facsimile of the official BC Ministry of Education Dogwood Diploma, which certifies completion of grade 12, as they have in the past. Under the new format, graduates will receive their official diploma in the summer.
The awards, scholarships and bursaries event will still recognize academic, athletic and community service achievements, but recipients will not parade across the stage in the scholastic dress of a graduate, according to Kennedy. Cap and gown is not being cancelled, just dressed down.
Another reason the event has been scaled back is the graduating class is too small.
“This year it’s the smallest grad class we’ve seen,” said Kennedy. “We’ve gone from over 200 kids down to just over a hundred.”
There has been some backlash to the ceremony change, said Dry Grad co-chair Loretta Jamieson.
“Some of the parents with more academic kids were seriously upset that they were not going to get the cap and gown,” said Jamieson.
Dry Grad co-chair Melody Irwin, a cap and gown proponent, said she was fine with the decision.
“Any time there’s change, it creates turmoil,” said Irwin, “even a piece of clothing.”
While the awards ceremony will have some nips and tucks, the grand march will remain untouched and the centrepiece of grad celebrations.
[Note: A previous version of this story stated that grade 12 students voted to forgo caps and gowns this year, when in fact it was the student grad committee who voted for the change.]
