In a series of community emails over the weekend, the Whitman Administration announced that they moved the 2025 graduation to the underwater city of Atlantis following a countywide verdict which moves all graduations to the formerly-lost city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe venue is huge and will easily fit 5,000 people,\u201d Principal Miller said in the email notifying students and families of the change. \u201cJust bring a raincoat and an oxygen tank.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Rutabaga has confirmed that the venue will hold just under 3,000 people, although the stadium notes on its website that there may be fish in some seats so capacity varies from day to day. The venue is also 20,000 leagues under the sea, so travel times could be as long as 48 hours in addition to the training necessary to withstand the G-force that comes with being 10,000 feet underwater.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In an informal protest vote organized by detractors of the venue change, 90% of seniors were opposed to the Atlantis graduation ceremony, with the 10% being the whole swim team and rowing team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Senior Illy Gal said she was a pretty big fan of the idea when it was first announced but that she\u2019s rethought her original stance as she\u2019s learned more.
\u201cWhen I read the email, I was psyched to go to Atlantis,\u201d Gal said. \u201cBut as I looked into it, the idea of having to take 100 hours of lessons and get SCUBA certified just to graduate high school seemed like a little too much.\u201d
In order to get students and family SCUBA certified in time, MCPS has devoted 850 million dollars to a Should Cure Underwater Breath Attacks company for the swim down to the Atlantis Stadium. In a statement to the Rutabaga, the MCPS budget office confirmed the money would be coming out of teacher paychecks and the part of the budget that is usually used for school supplies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYeah, you won\u2019t have paper for the next decade,\u201d said a budget office spokesperson. \u201cWe attempted to just take it out of teacher paychecks, but couldn\u2019t get nearly enough. At least graduation will be cool. Right?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In a series of community emails over the weekend, the Whitman Administration announced that they moved the 2025 graduation to the underwater city of Atlantis following a countywide verdict which moves all graduations to the formerly-lost city. \u201cThe venue is huge and will easily fit 5,000 people,\u201d Principal Miller said in the email notifying students […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therutabaga.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therutabaga.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therutabaga.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therutabaga.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therutabaga.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/therutabaga.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7,"href":"https:\/\/therutabaga.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5\/revisions\/7"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therutabaga.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therutabaga.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therutabaga.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therutabaga.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}