Feature Photo By Sebastian Wiegand: Graduate William Witt looks back during last year’s graduation ceremony. This year’s ceremony will be held Tuesday, May 24.
Imagine standing on the stage, the place is filled with thousands of people, and you have to make a short speech good enough to impress the audience. Well fear no more, you don’t have to take that role.
This year, the Top 10 will no longer be speaking as a group of ten outstanding seniors, now, any member from the senior class can audition to be the speaker at graduation. This decision gives every senior a chance to participate who have never been up on the stage before.
“Being in the top ten is a good achievement but when someone else isn’t it doesn’t mean that they didn’t try hard enough to graduate. It’s good to give others a chance to speak because they graduated too, not just the top ten,” said Miriam Eseanuela, a junior at Rangeview.
Whoever got chosen to speak at graduation will rehearse their speech with Ms. Strouse so she can prepare them for the stage filled with about 6,000 people.
The graduation speech will last two to five minutes instead of 30 seconds to a minute like last years speeches. The effect intended to be seen is a speech that’s more entertaining and uplifting.
“Sometimes the very best speakers of the class may not be with the top 10 and it’s an opportunity to having a much deeper and representative speech,” said Randy Mills, a teacher at Rangeview. “I have been advocating for this for a very long time, it’s a good move towards having a more exciting and dynamic graduation.”
According to Ms. Strouse, the quality of some of the speeches in the past has not been what the audience has been looking for. This is why the tradition has changed; however, they’re still going to recognize the high academic achievers like the Valedictorians, Salutatorians, and the top ten.
Although tradition has been changed, the expectation from the audience should be no less for it was said that the change is for the better.
