Dear Riverhawks Class of 2022:

Campus Current congratulates you for completing two years of community college under the worst possible circumstances.

We congratulate you for sticking to your studies even when you were surrounded by illness, grief and fear brought on by the pandemic.

We congratulate you for mastering online learning, for suffering social distancing and for not letting the isolation slow you down or stop you all together. 

On May 26, we will be there to congratulate you on graduation day. 

If you graduated from high school two years ago, you probably didn’t get to have a graduation ceremony. 

Now that you’re graduating from community college, you deserve an in-person graduation ceremony. You deserve the pomp and circumstance. You deserve to have all eyes on you as you walk across the stage to accept your diploma.  

You had to go through quarantining, wearing masks, social distancing, taking online classes, making fewer friends and staying inside all the time. That’s not the usual college experience.

You deserve the best ceremony possible and best sendoff possible.

Your graduation from AACC is on May 26 at the Live! Casino & Hotel.

After two years of the pandemic, this is AACC’s first in-person graduation ceremony. You deserve it. 

First of all, congratulations on getting through community college under these extreme circumstances. 

Second of all, please attend your graduation ceremony. Treat this graduation like you won a prize. Treat it like the crown jewel of your life so far because no other graduate has ever had to earn it the way you earned it. 

To everyone who isn’t graduating, come to the ceremony and support these remarkable graduates. Come and show them how proud you are of them for pushing through the pandemic without letting it stop them from achieving this outstanding goal. 

To the students not graduating this year, do you think you could have handled the extreme restrictions that the graduating students went through starting in 2020? 

To not even know your teachers these two years isn’t normal. To not even meet your classmates in-person isn’t normal. To not be able to hang out with friends on the Quad simply isn’t the normal college experience. 

Thank goodness graduation is normal this year. 

Campus Current salutes this upcoming graduating class. The staff of the student newspaper wishes you everything good in your future. 

So go to graduation, own the moment, take it all in, be proud of yourself, get recognized for your accomplishments and all you overcame. 

Then keep the celebration going. Never forget how special these accomplishments are. Class of 2022: You’re the crown jewel of college graduates.