A Shipley student’s senior year is typically marked by a series of milestones and long-awaited rites of passage—including final spring break sports trips with beloved teammates, prom, a raucous last day of senior classes, the Acorns to Oaks ceremony, Class Night, Baccalaureate, Commencement… But for the Class of 2020, the second half of their senior year was punctuated by one cancelled event after another. The School committed early in the shutdown to holding in-person Commencement Exercises, even amidst a swirling uncertainty about how the ongoing coronavirus pandemic would continue to impact the world and Shipley’s ability to convene one of its biggest graduating classes ever.

On the morning of Saturday, August 1, 2020, 86 of the Class of 2020’s 102 members, joined by two family members each, celebrated a physically distant Commencement on the Wolfson Athletic Fields. Everyone wore masks, and the exercises were livestreamed around the world so graduates’ loved ones could participate—from home—in the milestone. Katherina Rosqueta ’85 delivered a powerful message in her Commencement Address. “Do all that you can to instill and expand a sense of belonging to all those who continue to feel and be treated as outsiders, left out, like they don’t matter,” she urged the graduates. “In 2020, this is the deed to take up. And true to our School’s motto, take it up with courage and grace. Because when you do, your lives, our lives, our world will be the better and richer for it.”

View photos of the Class of 2020 Commencement Exercises.