Wits, what a shoddy graduation

It was like a bad movie, this graduation ceremony.

Our momentous day fizzled into a streaming link to watch some old fogeys making speeches – and not even a list of graduates’ names scrolling past like B-movie credits right at the end. Nothing.

Really? I understand it’s pandemic-time. I understand I can’t sit in the Great Hall and watch my little girl walk up to the stage in her pancake hat and gown – not brushed nylon – to be knighted after spending three years putting her all into a media studies degree.

But surely you can do better than these talking heads and no measly roll-past of names, Wits? Or do you also believe it’s not worth the paper it is written on?

Who is, in any case, going to get a job with a degree nowadays, I can hear you say as I shudder through your shoddy ceremony. I know you know all about Zoom; you use it all the time for your online classes.

So why not give us our one day in the sun; our one hour after spending nearly R200 000 to make the couple of kids getting their degree feel just a wee bit special?

Time slots; that’s what it is all about: break the group into little classes and Zoom, for Pete’s sake – whoever he is. Let them put on their tasselled pancakes, look them in the eye and call out their names – and their achievements.

At least then she could’ve nodded her tasselled head or high-fived or gasped or whatever. At least, at the end, all could’ve clapped before sending their pancakes flying through their lounges.

It seems you need an event manager, Wits, and I am virtually applying for the job. Experience I don’t have, unless you count the 21st party I organised with great success in the lockdown last year? Intimate, but special.

Would Hubby’s After Tears count? Maybe more than a decade ago, but I promise you, a good time was had by all.

Not that you need experience, I firmly believe. All you need is common sense – and to show some love.

But fear not: the gown is waiting, as is the pancake hat. She and her best friend will don their matric farewell creations and two families will unite in a front yard somewhere – and show the love you sorely lacked…