Photo courtesy of Raymond Link ’20 | Fireworks lighting up the Arizona sky at Brophy’s 2018 prom
By Jack Olsen’21
THE ROUNDUP
On April 8th, Principal Bob Ryan sent an email to all students and parents regarding many of the pressing issues concerning Brophy students following the school’s qurantiune. The email touched upon several areas of concern, one of these being plans for senior activities.
Brophy announced that the commencement ceremony is scheduled to be held on Friday, June 26 at 7 p.m, with only graduates and their parents or guardians being allowed to attend and the event being live streamed for the rest of the audience. The commencement ceremony would then be followed up two days later with prom, with this instead being a senior only event, however more details are still being decided.
So far this decision has been met with frustration as well as gratitude. “With seniors, we already got the short end of the stick. Our second semester is the one we most look forward to and having all of it cancelled really sucks,” said Matthew Winter ’20. “Most of the senior class is happy about there still being prom. At least we get one thing and it’s obviously one of the biggest events.” Up until now, most students had already assumed that graduation would be postponed, while prom would just be cancelled all together.
“I honestly thought they would cancel both indefinitely,” said Aidan Dunnigan ’20. “I didn’t think prom would happen at all. For graduation I thought that they were going to do an online streaming kinda thing. I still thought they would do something but not in person.” For graduation, this seems to be part of the route that Brophy has elected to take, with both an in person and online viewing experience being incorporated into the commencement ceremony.
For those family members or friends who still want to watch the senior commencement ceremony, Brophy will be providing a stream to watch live, but only two parents or guardians will be allowed to attend in person. “Only parents kinda sucks not having your full family there but it makes sense. Keeping it safe by not having a lot of people gathered together, I understand why they did that,” said Winter.
While graduation has been limited to parents and guardians only, that doesn’t necessarily mean this smaller crowd makes it safer. People are still being gathered together in a fairly large group and regardless of who they are, parent or friend or distant relative, there is still some risk posed in having a crowd. But even with this risk most students knew that, in some way, the Graduation Ceremony was still on. Unfortunately the same thing couldn’t be said about Prom.
“I thought Prom was gonna be cancelled… all schools need graduation but they can do without a Prom,” Winter said. However, now Prom has been confirmed, and while most of the event details remain unclear, there has been a noticeable change right out of the gate, that being to make Prom seniors only.
“I like that Brophy did [a senior only prom],” said Winter. “It makes it a lot more personal for us and is sort of our last hoorah as a class.” The general consensus among the senior class is that they are fairly satisfied with the decision to make Prom seniors only, with a few exceptions. “I don’t know how I feel about seniors only for Prom but I would rather the juniors be there,” said Dunnigan. “Most of my senior friends are happy juniors aren’t going to prom. I think they were probably just upset that apparently some juniors made a petition to make Prom open again.”
The other details surrounding Prom have yet to be announced by Brophy, but regardless of the specifics of each event, it’s certain that every senior is happy knowing that the events they once thought were cancelled are still being held after all.
