Behind the scenes of a perfect puma graduation
Graphic of people throwing their graduation caps in Carrillo Colors (Maylin Rivas / The Puma Prensa)
By Maylin Rivas, Staff writer
Graduating high school is a huge milestone in life, and the topic is mentioned around students as early as 6th grade. It’s a moment parents start picturing throughout your whole childhood.
Imagine that moment where you’re on stage and your principal hands over your diploma; you are looking over at the overflowing crowd of emotional relatives, and way too many rows of chairs. You can envision yourself shaking an administrator's hand and praying you don’t trip on the way out. But have you ever wondered how the event came to be?
It’s assumed it takes a lot of work to set up graduation day, what with the stage, seats, graduation practice, and more, but that’s typically as far as the thought goes. Here at Maria Carrillo High School, there are four special people who have been making it possible for many students to have the best time on their special night.
The graduation coordinator position is held by Mike Mastin, one of Carrillo’s social science teachers. He is the one who has the largest hand in planning the event. Alongside Mastin is Lisa Greenstein, MCHS’s administrative assistant, who is in charge of making sure the sound system is perfect for the ceremony, seeing what administrators are available to be on the stage, and making sure the school has extra portable toilets for all the visitors. Planning is only one half of the equation for a seamless graduation; the other half of work is in the labor of setting up the field.
The only faculty in charge of setting up the stage and laying out all the chairs for the graduates are the MCHS custodians. Our head custodian, Fessehai Woldeslassie, has shared in an interview that typically on graduation day he is on the clock for 24 hours. In addition to his usual school clean up duties, he and his crew also take care of the clean up post-ceremony, then proceed to haul all equipment on the field back up to the school grounds.
Graduation is the first half of the eventful night, following the ceremony is Project Grad — a safe sober environment held between 9pm to 6am on school grounds. Teenagers are notorious for being messy, and they definitely are no better when partying. A beautiful night like this can only be beautiful when adequately being kept up, and the kudos for that goes towards all the faculty involved—but especially our custodian team.
A huge thank you to the MCHS custodians Gorman Gubsa, Zewdi Habtemariam, Gebrebhan Tsege, and Fessehai Woldeslassie for making one of the biggest nights of a students life possible.