Local heroes
Champs, again!
Department hands out annual awards
CVU boys’ lacrosse team makes it nine in a row
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Volume 51 Number 24
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June 16, 2022
‘Resist despair’ CVU graduation speaker says Ceremony features Olympian Megan Nick, student speakers COREY MCDONALD STAFF WRITER
It would be hard to argue that another graduating high school class has lived through more tumultuous times in U.S. history. Champlain Valley Union High School’s Class of 2022, having been abruptly sent home in March 2020 thanks to the COVID19 pandemic, “saw and still see widespread economic strife and the amplification of crumbling social support systems,” said graduating senior and Hinesburg resident Eva Frazier, and have witnessed an explosion of racial strife and the confrontation with their country’s dark history of racism. “Just weeks ago, a white nationalist took 10 Black lives in the name of replacement theory, fearing a multiracial America,” she said. Then, while writing her speech, reports of 21 dead in Uvalde, Texas, most schoolchildren, hit her social media feed. “As a young person, the past two years have been enough to inspire doom, depression and despair,” Frazier said in her speech to her fellow 285 graduates and hundreds of audience members. “When witnessing these events, often through a screen, it is easy to be paralyzed by the bleakness of the world around you — I felt this countless times, distraught by the posts on my Instagram grid and newsfeed.” “But today, I urge you to resist the despairw you feel and move through hope toward action. We must feel and then act alongside our pain,” she said. “So today, I say take the time to recognize the hate around us. But, instead of despair, I like to advocate for action caused by a vote for a stronger future.” Frazier this year was selected for the U.S. Senate Youth Program, where she worked with Vermont Sens. Patrick Leahy and Bernie Sanders, and she is set to attend Harvard See GRADUATION on page 13
PHOTOS BY AL FREY
As is tradition, the graduates toss their mortarboards into the air. Olympian Megan Nick was CVU’s featured speaker. Grads cheer on their classmates.