OUR VIEW

Bladen Community College has made the best of a bad situation. Adversities we all have faced because of the coronavirus have given us opportunities, and the college and its outstretched family of students, faculty and staff are to be commended.

Joy and excitement that creates a special electricity at its graduation ceremony cannot be replicated in any other form. That’s just a simple fact. It is what makes the evening so incredibly important, so uniquely special for everyone involved.

Students have a sense of accomplishment only they can know from their inward, if not also outward, challenges reaching that moment. Their families have some sense, having gone along for the ride in the most supportive way possible. Their words of encouragement all lead to the climax.

And for the college’s faculty and leadership, is there greater joy within the profession than seeing students succeed? Seeing the “light bulb go on” in learning, and seeing the job opportunities follow for worthy and qualified individuals?

So many emotions for students and those at the college come together in that special time.

Sadly, the virus and what we must do to stay healthy has created a robbery of sorts — that traditional graduation ceremony isn’t happening as we know it.

Dr. Amanda Lee, named the fifth president of the college in December 2018 and on the job since Feb. 1 of last year, relied on experience and a staff second to none. She and her senior advisory group of vice presidents from the very outset of the pandemic’s impact in North Carolina — about Thursday, March 12, by any standard measure when cancellations and changes began to happen — sought to protect health and safety, maintain academic integrity, and as much as possible keep normalcy when there really was none.

“It’s a moving target. As soon as you make a decision, you invariably get a phone call,” she said in that first week.

March was full of rapid changes. It was a forced pace, one that eventually subsided even though tensions and anxiety that came with it did not.

We’re in a waiting game now. It’s the next phase or stage or decision based on something out of direct control. It’s needing a vaccine, one that will no doubt come and put us on the other side.

Meanwhile, the college — like all of us — does the best it can.

It has made sure all the students got their education and the graduates have been lauded. Senior staff and educational foundation leaders applauded them, gifted them and extended appreciation in the drive-thru diploma pickup. They’ll salute them again tonight, in a virtual ceremony, complete with a guest speaker providing inspiration and Lee, the president, giving graduates a call to action charge.

Spring has been different on the Dublin campus. Summer and fall will be, too. That target will keep moving.

Bladen Community College will successfully hit it. That we can count on.