Afterparty

Bob Handelman

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Two years after the pandemic upended their final semester and turned their commencement into an online affair, all the Yale classes of 2020 finally got a chance to march to Old Campus in caps and gowns. The event took place on May 14 and looked much like a typical commencement, although the traditional speech for granting degrees—“By the authority vested in me, I confer upon you . . .”—was rewritten in the past tense. About 90 percent of the Yale College Class of 2020 came back for the ceremony, along with many ’20 grads of the graduate and professional schools. (Some schools also invited their 2021 graduates.) “We gather today to commemorate all you taught us,” President Peter Salovey ’86PhD told the graduates. “We gather today to applaud your master class in resilience and in resolve.”