Western Washington University’s 2024 graduation ceremonies were extra special for students and families, filled with moments of success and joy – and a mark of their resilience.
For those who graduated high school in 2020, many end-of-year milestones were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, including a traditional graduation ceremony. This year, many of those students graduated after years of college deeply impacted by the pandemic, as well as global and political crises and uncertainty.
“For those of us that missed high school graduation, I hope you’ll join me in counting today as a two-for-one deal,” Gabby Laipenieks said in her commencement address on Saturday, June 15.
“We overcame the isolation and challenges of learning remotely and created thriving communities despite those barriers. What a testament to our strength and adaptability.”
Laipenieks, a now-political science graduate, told CDN that after being very involved in high school, it was difficult to have all the moments and milestones of the end of that chapter of life “ripped away.”
Not knowing when things would be OK again was challenging, she said, and it still impacts her.
“I have a harder time planning for the future now,” she said.
Laipenieks entered Western her sophomore year as a transfer student from a university in Colorado where she struggled to find a community. But Laipenieks graduated Western this weekend as a presidential scholar, a commencement speaker and surrounded by a community of friends, families and professors.
“Just to see her walk across the stage in and of itself was a real treat,” Laipenieks’s father Jens said after the ceremony Saturday, June 15.
“Clearly, we’re very proud,” her mother Kelly said. “But I also just felt so much joy seeing all the joy on all the graduates knowing they didn’t get a 2020 [grad].”
Kyana Grayer, a graduate from the College of Sciences and Engineering, beamed with her parents after her graduation on Friday, June 14.
Grayer’s parents said they were proud of her kindness and her ability to succeed, despite the challenges COVID-19 brought. Grayer also graduated as a presidential scholar.
“She’s really applied herself,” her mother Rene said.
Grayer graduated from Squalicum High School in 2020 and recalled the experience of driving through the parking lot and getting to walk across a little stage and take photos with her parents and teachers.
“She stayed focused the whole time during COVID-19, just stayed the course,” her dad, Dennis, said. “In situations where it was out of our control, she knew she had to go straight.”
Grayer said joining the Society of Women Engineers and the Formula SAE Electric Team brought her a needed community when she was taking classes online in her first year. She was president of the society in her last year at Western.
Alex Haase, a marine environmental science major who graduated on Sunday, June 16, said a faculty member recommending her for a student ambassador role dramatically changed her quiet, solitary first-year experience.
“I went from being a super introverted, shy, terrified girl from Cali that was in a new state with no friends or family,” Haase said. “Now I can walk through campus and say ‘hi’ to people all the time, and part of that started with that program.”
Haase’s mother Julianna said Alex can’t remember her last day of high school since it ended so abruptly. “I’m glad she’s getting that experience now,” she said.
Haase’s father Eric recalled feeling bad leaving her at Western her first year, with the university mostly closed and dorms quiet.
“The community, the friends, the support network she’s been able to build and the academic and excellent learning experience,” he said, “it’s super exciting to see it come from what it started as in her freshman year to now really having a reason to celebrate in a really positive way.”
How students found their community
The three graduates’ favorite moments at Western varied in location, but all connected to making community post-COVID.
Laipenieks spoke fondly of an intramural soccer team she put together her sophomore year with girls she had met in the dorms. The team was “terrible,” she said, but represented a special memory for her of the return of in-person social interaction.
“Lots and lots of our friends would come watch us play because we had nothing better to do, and the last game of the season … I scored a goal at the very end of the game,” she said. “And there were probably 20 people on the sidelines. It sounded like we had just won the World Cup.”
Grayer said her favorite memories of Western are in the computer lab of the engineering building, “just like, losing our minds over work,” and working as a math tutor, connecting with people she might not have met otherwise.
Haase said getting so much work experience in the labs was really special, as was the first spring at Western post-COVID.
“I had just never seen my own campus be populated like that,” she said.
As for the future, Grayer will head to Janicki in August to work as a project engineer. Haase will be a conservation technician for the Northwest Straits Commission in the summer and then after, go live in Japan for a while with family. Laipenieks will spend the summer working at the Sustainability Engagement Institute at Western and hopes to go to grad school or law school.
Charlotte Alden is CDN’s general assignment/enterprise reporter; reach her at charlottealden@cascadiadaily.com; 360-922-3090 ext. 123.
