Awards Day Adapts to Student and Faculty Concerns

By Maggie Kissinger

  “What I know is a lot of questions,” says Sister Nancy. The questions concern ‘Awards Day’, the end of the year liturgy followed by an awards ceremony. On January 21 a committee of faculty and administration consisting of Sister Nancy, Mrs. Koch, Ms. Mitchell, Ms. Rost, and Ms. Antons met to discuss changes to a Mercy tradition. ‘Awards Day’ has been a unique Mercy tradition for many years.

   The first meeting consisted of the committee throwing out questions about the day and how to effectively change it. The recurrent comment, ‘it’s a long day’ started the committee thinking about splitting up the different parts of Awards Day.

   Awards Day has typically been the second or third Friday in May. It consists of the liturgy, commissioning for those going on summer service trips, May Crowning, academic awards, awards presented by those outside of Mercy, service and leadership awards, special senior awards, senior scholarship slideshow, the candle ceremony and a picnic lunch. The committee notes the importance of all these parts and all of these parts will occur during school days for the whole school. “We definitely want something during the day,” says Sister Nancy. However, the parts may happen on different days.

   “We don’t have to have the awards and the mass on the same day. We used to have them separately. We could have May Crowning on May 1, or plan it for any day in May that it doesn’t rain so we can have it outside.” Seperating the different parts of Awards Day, means we’ll have classes before or after the ceremony each day.

   The committee is still thinking about how many days to have the different parts of Awards Day. Right now, two days seems most likely. A date is not set, but it has been decided that the Awards Day will take place sometime in the third or fourth week of May.

   Sister Nancy says the committee has decided that everyone part of Awards Day will be an all-school event, “We will have an audience to see all of these awards. We know we want all the classes to see the awards.” About the senior slideshow, Sister Nancy says, “We can’t lose the younger students to see that. It’s not an only senior thing.”

   One of the things that make Awards Day so long is the number of awards presented. The decision on whether to present every award or cut some of them is still under discussion. Time is an important issue.

   “We don’t have to do all the awards, but how do we pick?” says Sister Nancy. The award that gets cut could be someone’s only award. “Gosh, it matters. The Honor Roll takes twenty minutes, but it might be the only award a person gets.”

   Another concern of the students is the picnic lunch and dressing up. Typically, ‘Awards Day’ is a dress-up day for students but most students won’t want to dress up for multiple days. The committee members have discussed making only one of the days a dress-up day but haven’t decided on which day. The picnic lunch will also be only one day, but which day is still to be determined.