Picture this: after working relentlessly towards a goal for who knows how long, you are finally, finally, recognized for your achievement. Striding to your award, maybe a medal or cord, excitement rushes through your veins, imagining the cheers you’ll receive as you cross the stage with it and your diploma. With your eyes closed, you drink it in. I did it. I really–oh, what’s this? You can’t wear it to graduation? They’re throwing all your efforts out the window?
Your award just became equivalent to a hat or a miniskirt; all blacklisted on the dress code for schools.
In recent years, there has been a growing trend of high schools barring students from wearing cords and medals to graduation ceremonies. Whether for the sake of safety or unity, this rule is one inciting discourse from discontent teachers, parents, and students.
Maybe they are a safety issue? The honors carry the potential to be quite dangerous. They are, indeed, made of strings or ropes that could choke the student or cause someone to suffocate from the weight. If someone has pins, they could puncture the awardee if they are not careful.
The medals could even fall off the ribbon, just like the winter Olympic medals this year. There was a supposed manufacturing error that made it easier for the medals to detach themselves from the string. American skier Breezy Johnson was jumping in hers when her gold medal broke off into pieces. Schools could be protecting us from this embarrassing demise when we are jumping on stage in celebration.
However, this concern simply means that we do not trust teenagers, these young adults, to know how to properly wear an award.
Yes, some students’ behaviors are unruly and can pose a safety hazard when combined with a medal, but does that mean that we have to punish everyone because of a what-if? Believing that every teenager is a troublemaker in their rebellious phase is a dangerous stereotype to uphold. An adolescent’s nature varies based on their upbringing rather than being a uniform experience, as concluded by a report from Yale University. Nevertheless, it is still thought to be safer than sorry.
If it is not a safety issue, it could be an inclusion problem. Medals may distract from the main reason students are there: the ceremony itself. We can’t have the sparkly shine of medals outshine the event. Everything must be uniform to show that the school is a united front. To celebrate you, we must celebrate the school first.
With this mindset, we forget the actual purpose of graduation, who everyone has come together to celebrate; the students. After four long years, graduation celebrates the progress students have made to come here. Medals and cords demonstrate the progress students have made along the way to the end.
But now these awards, which were once seen as an honor, are seen as a disgrace.
They create inequality and a social hierarchy among students. The only way to reduce the chaos is to shame the students and force them to hide their excellence. Ignore their devotion. Reprimand them for going above and beyond just because other students did not go the extra mile and did not do more than what was necessary. These schools cater to them, which makes one wonder why they even have medals and cords in the first place.
These awards not only acknowledge the talent, leadership, service, character, and excellence in academics/sports of students, but also represent the pride that teachers have in cultivating their students to become so successful. They represent the support that motivated these students to win, and they illustrate the number of dedicated and diligent students who call that school home.
If a school desires to let some of the admiration for their students bleed out by allowing some cords and medals to be worn, the issues of inclusiveness and equality are still being sustained. It is a hypocritical act that flaunts injustice in the face of students who are still forbidden from wearing their honors. It’s either the school bans all of them or none of them.
Notably, there is a concern that a student wearing numerous awards may become a huge safety issue for themselves and for others. A realistic solution is to have a limit for the number of awards a student can carry on their person, such as having each student be able to wear at most one medal/cord. That way, the school community can still acknowledge some of their efforts.
As advocating for honors at graduation continues in high schools across the country, more schools fall to the fear of upset and jealousy that may ensue conflict between peers. Maybe someone should send these schools a little award of their own. Perhaps it will entice them to change their minds.
