High school class of 2020 finally gets a grad night at USF

TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — University of South Florida graduations are underway, with three ceremonies held Friday and hundreds of students walking across stage to accept their honors.

This week, there have also been several protests on campus and some were worried the protests might disrupt graduation.

Friday, two students held up a pro-Palestinian flag, but it was quickly confiscated by University officials.

Many of the students graduating this week graduated high school in 2020 at the height of the pandemic.

As a result, they did not get to have a normal high school graduation. A fact not lost on USF President Rhea Law.

“This marks your first in person graduation since the onset of the global pandemic,” said Law, as she addressed the graduates and their families.

For USF Student Mattie Zeigler, graduating high school in 2020 was not the experience she was hoping for.

“It was sad,” she said. “I felt like I worked really hard and I was always looking forward to graduating. I was in all of these societies and I had all of these chords and then obviously COVID happened.”

For these students, COVID didn’t just take away their graduations, it completely changed their high school experience.

“So much got ripped apart from us,” Alexis Aponte said. “We didn’t have our prom, didn’t get to do graduation, didn’t get to do any of our grad bashes.”

So for the students at Friday’s graduation, the event was event more special.

“Oh, it’s super important, and I was looking very forward to having this and when I started USF, it was still kind of in COVID times, everything was still in lock down, and I was very worried that we would never be opened back up and have commencements like this, so I’m very excited that it’s actually happening,” Zeigler said.

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