PRESS EDITORIAL: Let’s give graduates without jobs a mission

Graduating without a ceremony to celebrate one of life’s signature accomplishments is like a sentence without a punctuation mark after the last word, a basketball game without a final buzzer, a movie without the scroll of credits at the end, a marriage ceremony without a “you may kiss the bride” moment.

Yet millions of America’s young men and women who have successfully completed their high school and college educations are being denied that rite of passage because the finish of their senior year of study happens to coincide with a pandemic.

Well-wishers—proud generations of the families of graduates—won’t be able to witness and applaud that classic walk across the stage to accept a diploma, but thanks to some creative thinking in many communities, the graduates’ achievements will not pass without recognition.

A wonderful idea for celebrating high school graduation is playing out in Port Washington, where on Sunday, June 7—graduation day—the graduates will parade through the downtown in separate vehicles with an escort of police cars and fire trucks. With almost 200 members of the graduating class expected to take part, it will not be a short parade. Applause, cheers, whistles and whoops from a safely separated sidewalk audience will surely greet each passing graduate.

After the parade, the graduates will be able to stream a commencement video in their homes, complete with the valedictorian and class farewell addresses and a speech by Port High alumnus Mike Hess, who has had a distinguished career working with astronauts and space missions for NASA. Each graduate will be introduced on the video with their photo.

Elsewhere in Ozaukee County and across the country, communities are finding ways to ensure that graduates are recognized. Congratulatory yard signs are popping up. In Brooklyn, a high school has created a wall of fame with large, laminated photos of each graduate mounted on a fence in front of the school.

Back in Ozaukee County, Ozaukee Press is offering congratulatory ads featuring photos of local high school, college and even middle school graduates at minimal cost.

The Press is also planning its annual graduation section amid challenges it hasn’t encountered before. This popular keepsake publication, with dozens of pages devoted to graduation portraits of every new graduate of five area high schools, plus commencement event photos—those great shots of capped and gowned students smiling and hugging—and lists of scholarship winners, has been published every June for many years with sponsorship by local businesses. With most graduation event photos impossible this year, the section will have a different look, but it will be no less of a tribute to graduates.

Make-do commencement activities are not the only way the graduates of 2020 are being forced to face a present and future fraught with daunting challenges. College graduates are being thrust into an economy devastated by job losses unequaled since the Depression with diminished hope of starting the careers for which they studied. With families struggling financially, more high school graduates than usual may not be able to afford college. These many young Americans who will be looking for something meaningful to do should be seen as a national resource.

They should be given the opportunity to put their youthful energy to work serving their country in its time of extreme need in a national service corps.

When the U.S. last faced economic conditions as dire as those of today, President Franklin D. Roosevelt helped lead the nation out of the Great Depression by urging Congress to create the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration. Millions went to work in these programs, doing what needed to be done to help the nation recover in return for a modest stipend from the government.

There is much to do in today’s America, starting with restarting the economy. Public health authorities estimate that 300,000 new workers will be needed for essential coronavirus testing and tracing alone. New graduates could be trained to fill these ranks. Others could be put to work distributing food to those in need, augmenting municipal crews for hard-pressed local governments, sanitizing public places and tutoring students set back in their learning by school closures.

A framework for this already exists in the AmeriCorps volunteer service program. A bill awaiting action in Congress would expand this organization to recruit and train thousands of new volunteers to serve the country where needed. The measure would also increase the yearly stipend of $15,000 for AmeriCorps workers, which only makes sense. It is hard to imagine a better return on a federal aid investment than this, and volunteers deserve something approaching a living wage. Fast, bipartisan action on the bill is needed.

It is fitting that graduates are given an opportunity to help defeat the pandemic that stole their graduation rituals.