Ransom Everglades’ Class of 2020 earned the unfortunate distinction of being the first senior class in the school’s 117-year history to graduate via a Zoom webinar, and the global pandemic that hit in mid-March also deprived RE’s 135 seniors of many traditional spring festivities. 

Yet the school’s faculty, staff and administration worked to recognize the relatively small senior class that had adopted the moniker “Quality over Quantity,” devising a host of socially distant festivities to salvage a spring spent largely in isolation. 

The mini-celebrations began when Ransom Everglades seniors emerged from their homes or apartments across Miami-Dade County on Saturday, April 18, to find large, personalized signs – their senior yearbook pages. Some signs were left anonymously. Some families caught Head of School Penny Townsend or other members of the administration in the act. The Senior Sign Caper elicited smiles, a few tears – mostly from parents – and plenty of posts on social media. 

A few weeks later, a creative adaptation to the customary Senior Send-Off might have surpassed the traditional event for its displays of pure joy and RE spirit. Members of the Class of 2020 drove in decorated cars past cheering faculty and staff – all wearing masks and standing more than six feet apart – on the upper school campus on May 17. The seniors waved from car windows, poked out of sun roofs and honked horns with abandon as the head of school, waving pom poms, personally greeted every car. 

Math teacher and water polo coach Eric Lefebvre served as a spirited emcee, welcoming each senior by name and revving up the assembled faculty and staff as music cranked through loudspeakers. Back on campus for the first time since mid-March, the seniors received RE swag bags that each included the 2019-20 yearbook, the Inklings literary magazine and an assortment of gifts, including a Paul Ransom medallion from the head of school. The drive-through was followed by a virtual event that included some of the more customary send-off elements. 

On the Class of 2020’s originally scheduled commencement day, Ransom Everglades provided a virtual ceremony that included an address from retired National Basketball Association star Shane Battier P’26 and valedictorian Natalia Lopez ’20. Talia Berler ’20 and Joseph Gross ’20 jointly received the Faculty Cup; Preston Edmunds ’20 received the Head of School’s Cup; Kareena Rudra ’20, the Swenson Cup; and Diego Duckenfield-Lopez ’20, the Ransom Cup; and Humanities Department faculty member Greg Cooper claimed the 2019-20 Arthur Moses Faculty Award.  

The morning after the remote commencement, 34 members of RE’s faculty and the head of school ventured out across Miami to hand-deliver the Class of 2020 diplomas that had been conferred the night before. Teachers selected seniors they knew personally and showed up on their doorsteps on May 23, bearing the diplomas, senior awards and, in some cases, confetti guns. 
  
Salutatorian Dylan Tie-Shue ’20 summed up the Class of 2020’s response to the historic spring during his speech at the virtual Senior Send-Off. 

“It doesn’t matter what privileges our class has lost, because what mattered was that we went through it all together,” he said. “As our favorite transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, ‘We acquire the strength we have overcome.’ All of those struggles, worries, and failures have brought us closer together … Our blood will always run green and blue, and that’s something that will stay with us forever.”

See Class of 2020 webpage

RE Class of 2020 Matriculation List: 
Amherst College, MA (1) 
Babson College, MA (4) 
Barnard College, NY (1) 
Barry University, FL (1) 
Bates College, ME (1) 
Boston College, MA (1) 
Boston University, MA (1) 
Brandeis University, MA (1) 
Brown University, RI (1) 
Bryn Mawr College, PA (1) 
Bucknell University, PA (1) 
California Institute of Technology, CA (1) 
Carnegie Mellon University, PA (2) 
Chapman University, CA (1) 
Colgate University, NY (1) 
College of the Holy Cross, MA (1) 
Cornell University, NY (5) 
Dartmouth College, NH (1) 
Dickinson College, PA (1) 
Drexel University, PA (1) 
Duke University, NC (3) 
Elon University, NC (2) 
Emory University, GA (1) 
Florida State University, FL (3) 
Georgetown University, DC (3) 
Harvard College, MA (2) 
IDC Herzliya, Israel (1) 
Loyola Marymount University, CA (1) 
Loyola - New Orleans, LA (1) 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MA (3) 
New York University, NY (10) 
Northeastern University, MA (1) 
Northwestern University, IL (2) 
Nova Southeastern University, FL (1) 
Pomona College, CA (1) 
Princeton University, NJ (2) 
Purdue University, IN (2) 
Rice University, TX (1) 
Santa Clara University, CA (1) 
Southern Methodist University, TX (7) 
Stanford University, CA (1) 
The University of Alabama, AL (1) 
The University of Texas, Austin, TX (3) 
Trinity College, CT (1) 
Tufts University, MA (4) 
Tulane University, LA (6) 
University of California, Berkeley, CA (1) 
University of California, Santa Barbara, CA (2) 
University of Chicago, IL (2) 
University of Colorado at Boulder, CO (4) 
University of Delaware, DE (1) 
University of Florida, FL (1) 
University of Miami, FL (5) 
University of Michigan, MI (2) 
University of Oregon, OR (1) 
University of Pennsylvania, PA (3) 
University of Richmond, VA (1) 
University of Southern California, CA (4) 
University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI (1) 
Vanderbilt University, TN (2) 
Vassar College, NY (1) 
Virginia Tech, VA (1) 
Wake Forest University, NC (2) 
Washington University in St Louis, MO (5) 
Wellesley College, MA (2) 
Yale University, CT (1)