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HILLSBOROUGH: More than 600 gain high school diplomas in 90-plus degree temperatures

The heat was on at graduation ceremony

By Gene Robbins, Managing Editor
   Moms and dads came to see their treasured teenager be handed a well-earned diploma, but Mother Nature was the distracting presence at Thursday early-evening’s graduation ceremony at Hillsborough High School.
   Temperatures were in the 90s, which led to all kinds of precautions taken to safeguard against heat-related illness among graduates and spectators alike. If it feels warm to you, speakers told the audience, the students sitting looking into the sun on the plastic turf field felt 10 to 15 degrees hotter.
   Mercifully, the weather allowed the ceremony to be held outside. Many conversations before the ceremony started with references to last year’s event inside the gymnasium when several people were treated for heat-related attacks.
   Water bottles were positioned at the base of every chair of graduates, faculty and guests. Right after the national anthem, Principal Karen Bingert told the graduates to drink up.
   Students were allowed to wear shorts under their robes and sported a wide variety of footwear, from flip flops to boots to gladiator sandals, as they processed two by two around the curve of the football field track.
   The township Rescue Squad deployed 20 people around the site. Parents sauntered to the home stands in broad-brimmed hats and shorts, perhaps even with parasols, giving the atmosphere of a day at the beach more than a formal, long-awaited ceremony.
   A simulcast was available in the air-conditioned Commons in the school building, but fewer than a dozen people took advantage, school officials said.
   Interestingly, a late-organized streaming of the ceremony on the Internet drew 670 hits, said Caz Bielen, the contractor videographer.
   Superintendent Jorden Schiff and Board of Education President Thomas Kinst passed on giving remarks in an effort to shorten the ceremony.
   Class President Jimmy Cao presented the class gift of benches to be placed outside the gym. The class chose that, he said, so future students can have a place to sit while waiting for their mothers to pick them up from volleyball practice, “questioning if his life is just a sham, trembling at the sharpening possibility that he will be spending the remainder of his existence out here waiting.”
   Mr. Cao told his classmates “this school has become a part of you — down to the chicken patties, single-serving chocolate milk containers and unsalted French fries.”
   He told them they have had “the time of your life here. You’ve created the memories that will forever define your childhood . . . You’ve found a home. And you’ve finally realized that now you’ve grown up.”
   He quoted Dr. Seuss: “Don’t cry because it’s over; smile because it happened,” and then changed his mind and said it should be “Don’t cry because it happened; smile because — thank heavens — it’s finally over.”
   He ended by urging classmates to look to their left, right and behind them and “soak in all the details of this person’s face — the freckles, creases — everything.”
   ”When you’re 78 years old and looking back at the ‘glory days,’ you’re going to want to remember these faces,” he said.
   Shreehari Raghavan began his valedictorian address with an inside joke — that his speech would be nothing like his fifth-grade DARE speech.
   He urged his classmates to define success as they see it, not others.
   ”We live in a world where individuals around us are eager to define success for us and sometimes don’t recognize that each person has different values and goals,” he said.
   He suggested breaking some rules and expressing individuality. As an example, he pointed to his penchant for wearing clothing of his favorite colors of red and orange — “even though I’ve had more than a few people question my sense of fashion,” he said.
   ”Judge your success not by its magnitude, but by its quality, and improving the lives of those around you is of the finest quality when it comes to categorizing success,” he said.
   He ended with a poem on this subject, but, instead of reciting it, he sang a cappella.
   When he finished, Ms. Bingert said, “That was a first. Good for you, Shree.”
   Salutatorian Rachael VanPelt acknowledged the time, help and encouragement of administrators and teachers.
   ” Above all, though, we must thank our parents for sympathizing with us after late nights, driving us around for 17 years and (sometimes unwillingly) rushing to the store at 10 o’clock at night to pick up poster board for that history project,” she said.
   ”Each year, increasing amounts of freedom have been granted to us,” she said. “We now have the choice on how to spend our futures, and, as is obvious from the long list of college commitments, military pledges and decisions to enter the workforce, each of us has selected a unique path.”