Column: How a COVID ‘make-up’ college graduation ceremony actually made up for a lot

Inside the Hearnes Center at the University of Missouri, where a make-up graduation ceremony for the class of 2020 was held this month. Along the portion of Interstate 70 that runs through Missouri, yellow rocket swarmed the roadside, redbuds laid magenta feathers against the stolid pines and green-misted treetops framed mile after mile of farmland — the glittering silos and the black cows, the sudden absolute red of an American barn inevitably followed by a white house with a green roof nestled under a few shade trees amid fields either fallow or plowed. A decal between lions guarding the entrance of the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism reads: “The Original Social Distancers- Tigers stick together by staying 6+ feet apart.” Danny struggled to accept that his failure to launch had nothing to do with him; he read Steinbeck and Kerouac and Hunter S. Thompson; he got a Gonzo tattoo and bleached his hair. When Mizzou announced it would be holding a make-up graduation ceremony for the class of 2020, Danny’s first inclination was to pass. Though only a sliver of Mizzou’s 2020 graduating class participated — “I was in town hanging out, so I thought, why not graduate?” I heard one young woman say — it was enough to make it feel real.