Despite pandemic, graduates celebrate

May 9, 2020 – Bloomington, Indiana USA: Two woman splash in water as a group of Indiana University students, who just finished graduating from the Kelley School of business during a video ceremony this weekend, celebrate afterwards by jumping into waters of the Showalter Fountain, Saturday, May 9, 2020. Classes at IU were taught virtually since spring break due to the COVID-19/Coronavirus pandemic, and in person classes were canceled. (Photo by Jeremy Hogan/The Bloomingtonian)

Graduation ceremonies at Indiana University were broadcast over the internet via video, both live and recorded, this weekend by various departments at Indiana University due to the social distancing demands of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, some students still found ways to celebrate, and parties commenced in yards along 6th Street, and on Washington, in a mostly quieted college town.

At the Showalter Fountain, a group of students who said they had just graduated with business degrees posed for photos, then some plunged into the cold water. They have now graduated into an America with few to any jobs, and perhaps the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Classes at IU have not been held in person since before spring break, and the end of the semester, normally a time of parties and celebrations, was muted by a virus that has now killed more Americans than the Vietnam War.

The parties this weekend are perhaps the last before what is surely a summer of more social distancing and online classes, as the university, the main economic engine of Bloomington, looks at the future.

Meanwhile, hundreds of workers are now laid off, in jobs across the city, and some have still not received unemployment, while many townies, are wondering about their own futures.