Third in News Category Public School Division Hawaii High School Journalism Awards Contest 2015

“After four years of attending McKinley High School, wouldn’t you want your name to be called out and be recognized? Shouldn’t “recognition’ be a tradition also?”

This is part of senior Netty Leviticus’s petition summary.

Leviticus is petitioning to have students’ names called at the May 2015 graduation ceremony. So far, she has about 200 signatures from different grade levels. Her goal is to get 300-400 signatures. She plans to show it to school officials before second semester.

When Leviticus was a freshman, her brother was a senior. She was shocked to learn that McKinley did not have a name-called graduation ceremony. Since then, she has wanted to start a petition.

Senior Malina Lewis, who signed the petition, said, “We want to be heard and recognized.”

April Nakamura, the teacher in charge of the graduation ceremony, said that she does not want to discourage Leviticus but the result will be “no.”

“When you are a senior, you want your name called. After you graduate, you are happy that it wasn’t,” Nakamura said.

Nakamura said the name-calling process would make the graduation at least two hours longer. Right now, the graduation lasts about 50 minutes.

Senior Wei Gong said, “The name-called graduation will take too long and I’d rather spend more time celebrating with my friends and family.”

The current form of graduation is a tradition at McKinley High School. The graduation ceremony at McKinley is more formal than the ones at other high schools.

“The big picture, the big thought behind why McKinley doesn’t call out names is because the big deal about McKinley is always about unity. It is about graduating as a class, not as an individual, because everything you do is about us, not me,” Nakamura said.

Leviticus is still going to collect the signatures for the petition and talk to Principal Ron Okamura.

“I’m still going to try no matter what the result is,” she said.

This article placed third for news in the public school division of the 2015 Hawaii High School Journalism Awards.