More than 220 Bangor High School seniors received their diplomas in the Cross Insurance Center on Sunday, marking the end of careers that began with the COVID-19 pandemic.
While the pandemic has waned and the maskless ceremony has returned to the Cross Insurance Center for a few years, graduating students recalled how entering high school during the start of the pandemic shaped their last four years.
Despite that and other challenges, students commended one another for making the best of the experience and learning from mistakes. Students recognized the families, teachers and administrators who guided them on their four-year journey and helped them earn their diploma.
In his speech, graduating senior Andre Brozman recalled entering high school in 2019, months before that pandemic led officials to shutter schools and send students into online learning.
Despite this and other hardships that threatened to tear students apart, Brozman applauded his classmates for coming together to “transform our environment into a more welcoming and comfortable place.”
This teamwork will shape them as adults, Brozman said. He gave the example of when students raised money for the victims of the October mass shooting in Lewiston. He challenged his classmates to continue acts of service after school because people will remember them for that.
“To succeed doesn’t mean to achieve fame or fortune, but to leave those with whom we cross paths a little more joyful and hopeful than before,” Brozman said.
In her speech, Class President Olivia Swartz asked her classmates to reflect on their high school careers, despite students’ eagerness to look ahead at their futures.
“We all have something intangible, extraordinary to contribute to the world whether we realize it yet or not,” Swartz said. “Right now, we’ll never again be as young, physically capable and hungry for something bigger than who we are and what we have today.”
This year’s graduating class boasts a 92 percent graduation rate, the highest in the school’s history, according to Ray Phinney, school department spokesperson. That exceeds both Maine’s average four-year high school graduation rate of 87 percent and the department’s own 90 percent graduation rate goal set in its 10-year strategic plan published in 2020.
The school’s 2022 graduating class first met that benchmark with a 90 percent four-year graduation rate, and the Bangor High School Class of 2023 repeated the feat, Phinney said.
Bangor High School does not recognize a valedictorian or salutatorian, but the school does distribute French Medals to the four students with the highest academic achievements. Nuthi Ganesh, Callie Tennett, Olivia Swartz and Jaeda Grosjean received French Medals this year.
Collectively, the graduating class received nearly 100 scholarships totalling more than $200,000, according to Paul Butler, Bangor High School principal.
Senior Cooper Thibodeau also received a George J. Mitchell Scholarship worth $10,000, at the ceremony. Butler also recognized the eight graduates who chose to enlist in the armed forces after graduation.
