With two members of the Class of 2020 under my roof (one high school and one college), I feel first hand the implications of the Coronavirus on students and families as graduations go virtual, traditions are snapped, and last goodbyes are conveyed via Zoom.
At The College Sage, I have stayed busy trying to keep abreast of all the university changes, adjustments, thoughts, expectations, hopes because of this pandemic. Along the way, I saw an article about how the pandemic is even impacting long lasting college traditions like the required “swim test.” That article reminded me that I now had an adult child in my basement who might just have been one of the last students to pass his “swim test” since he decided to graduate early in December (albeit with plans to walk in May). I asked my son Matthew if he would share his reflections on the “swim test” as a tradition that many of his peers will never experience. Below you will find his thoughts on the swim, graduating without pomp, and the circumstances that propel him to see the positive side of even these different days. I hope you’ll enjoy his optimism as he helps us to see that traditions are only what you make of them. If the Class of 2020 mimics these sentiments, we will indeed come out of this crisis better than we started.
By Matthew Leadem, Columbia University Class of 2020
On the evening of Wednesday, September 25, 2019, during my final semester of college, I added perhaps my last first to a robust list of novel experiences that I had accumulated over years on my college campus.
I took a plunge in the eight-lane lap pool set deep within the labyrinthine athletics complex tucked depths below my urban Manhattan campus, situated directly next to a subway tunnel.
Admittedly, this pyramidal network of tunnels and the chambers they connected – basketball courts, dance studios, weight rooms – was not a space I had previously frequented. Devotion to my studies was interrupted by social jaunts into the city, down the strip of campus bars, from one end of campus to the other to join friends in their respective niches. And for three and a half years, I was content to call this movement sufficient.
What sent me down into this warren, off the diving board, and into the chlorine abyss was not my own curiosity, not my raging desire to claim “I’d swum in the university pool” as if that were a rebellious achievement, but rather, fulfillment of a long-standing, potentially archaic, graduation requirement: to pass the courtly-named “swim test”.
The “swim test” tradition allegedly dates back to the brink of World War II, where the government advised universities to instill a sense of wartime readiness in their student bodies. One skill entailed in this spirit of preparedness was the ability to swim. By no means a stretch – and who better to enforce than the University Registrar? How better to enforce than codify the ability to swim as a requirement for graduation?
And so, despite no prospect of war (nor any global crisis – I rashly thought – on the horizon), I joined the decades’ worth of students who swam three lengths of the pool: down to the end, back once, and down to the end again. Any stroke, or lack of a stroke, suffices, so long as you stay afloat in a forward motion that does not visually signal distress. This subjective interpretation was at the discretion of a pool monitor, who thankfully exercises leniency in her judgement.
Two particular memories have stuck with me from the roughly three minutes I spent in the pool. One, I recall opening my eyes underwater, probably just for the childish novelty of it, and spotting a deep sea diver, equipment on, tank affixed, masked eyes pointed my way, in the lane to my right. Not a comforting sight in the slightest, but space constraints forced the nighttime SCUBA course into the lane directly neighboring mine. Two, I almost did signal distress, and not just owing to the diver drifting towards me. That Wednesday evening must have been a busy one, as I merged into my lane wedged between two close-by swimmers following a repeated cyclical pattern in the lane, in what was practically bumper-to-bumper traffic. I do not profess to be a remotely professional swimmer, though I could not swim forward at a slow enough speed to avoid colliding with the swimmer in front of me, in a way that did not better resemble treading than swimming.
I passed, hastily dried off in the locker room, and headed back to my dorm still dripping wet, like tens of thousands of students before me likely had. And that was my fulfillment of the tradition.
One might be fooled by the host of rumored origins that explain this tradition. One humorously posits that this graduation requirement justifies the existence of this pool complex underneath Broadway and Amsterdam Avenues – an expensive, delicate, and I suppose underutilized – though not that Wednesday evening! – construction. One, fortunately rebuked, claims that a wealthy donor’s son drowned following his graduation, and this was the school’s penitent response.
The tradition remains steadfast only for the undergraduate College of Arts & Sciences, to which I belonged, but was repealed for the corresponding Engineering School in 1992. Any campus tour guide will have you know that this discrepancy is justified – “engineering students don’t need to fulfill the swim test requirement because they can just build a bridge” – followed by a few seconds where a hoo-ha of laughter is anticipated. Already a forced chuckle, it will not become funnier with repeated hearings, as I’ve endured passing by these swaths of tour groups, when parked out front the stairwell that disappears underground towards the athletic complex.
I was in Taiwan for a spring sabbatical when I received the news that my university, like every other in the country, would transition to an online learning platform for the remainder of the semester. It did not particularly concern me as I had finished my degree a semester early. And, in all fairness, even if it had, the virus’ effect on the swim test would have never crossed my mind.
Of secondary – maybe even tertiary – concern was this swim test requirement. How to manage this online? The solution: for the first time in the school’s history, waive it. And so, my graduating class of 2020 bears the distinction, aside from the “Class of Corona” moniker, of being the sole class exempted from the infamous swim test since its institution a near century ago.
Will we be unprepared for war, or a global crisis, should it strike, given that many of my classmates will never fulfill the swim test requirement? Most certainly not. Traditions, however obsolete, antiquated, or presently preposterous, exist for the sake of continuing a legacy, to bridge the past and the present.
I jumped off the diving board, partaking in one tradition before it was snatched, but there are a number of baccalaureate commencement rituals that will necessarily be withheld owing to the virus. Withheld from all of my classmates, as well as me.
I will graduate without ever donning a gown, propping a cap up on my head, taking an official portrait.
I will graduate without ever taking a photo besides my closest companions – people with whom I shared irreplaceable moments, in whom I confided.
I will graduate without walking across a stage, taking a diploma in my hand, and nervously pacing the whole way through to ensure I do not misstep.
And I mention all of these missed and irreplicable opportunities not in an effort to foster pity, but rather to convey how I took an in-person graduation ceremony – the pomp and fanfare that come with it – largely for granted. It was not until it was denied to me that I began to evaluate the importance of such an occasion. A commencement signifies a form of closure – a sweet, momentous one – that spurs an “I did this” realization. I particularly longed for this feeling, given my early departure at the end of fall semester. My decision to take flight early was, after all, contingent on the security of being able to see my classmates and participate in an in-person graduation ceremony come May of this year.
I’ve reflected a lot on my decision to graduate one semester early, particularly as it relates to the pandemic. I’m confronted with two opposing questions. By culminating my studies the semester before the pandemic erupted, did I dodge perhaps the sneakiest bullet fired my way? Or, by doing so, did I unknowingly sacrifice the last weeks of my collegiate experience?
While I was able to salvage most of my spring sabbatical plans, despite the global circumstances, my college tenure remains a door barely creaked open, not fully closed. A graduation ceremony would be the final push it needs to shut firmly.
My mindset during this pandemic is principally driven by helplessness, an emotion that has swelled under the negligent behavior of our woefully incapable leadership, across many echelons of government. This feeling supersedes the melancholy I feel – when will I see my classmates next? – or the anger I feel – why did my year have to be the unlucky one? I feel there is so little control over my own life that lamenting is unproductive.
And so I have to go forth with a plenitude of optimism. The door, just barely creaked open, might not have to close in the traditional sense. The “Class of Corona”, as we may or may not be labeled in the future, will always strive to plug this gap, to fill this void, give the final tap that presses the door shut. It will not come in the form of a traditional ceremony, it will not come in the soaring of graduation caps, the tearful goodbyes, the popping of champagne corks, diploma-studded photographs. I can only hope that, in never receiving these opportunities, we will proceed through life with an unquenchable thirst to remain united by our loyal bonds, our optimism, and our gratitude, despite these unforeseen circumstances. If we can, then perhaps, just like the jump off the diving board, traditions are only what you make of them anyway.
