Springside Chestnut Hill’s graduation will be moved back an hour in order to avoid conflict with the Muslim holiday of Eid. This issue was brought to the school’s attention by Muslim students, who feared they had to decide between attending prayer or walking at graduation.
Graduation is one of the most important events in a high school senior’s life. It’s one of bittersweet goodbyes and a celebration of the end of the school year with friends, family and faculty. However, as the new year approached, students and families realized that this major day shared the date with another event of great significance to many Muslim families: Eid.
Eid had coincidentally landed on the class of 2025’s graduation day. Now, you may be familiar with Eid-al Fitr (عيد الفطر), the day that marks the end of Ramadan (رَمَضَان), but there’s actually another Eid, Eid-al Adha (عيد الأضحى). The holiday marks the time when the Muslim prophet Ibrahim showed his willingness to sacrifice his son Ismael, as an act of obedience to Allah (Allah means “god” in Arabic).
During this day, Muslims perform early morning prayers together, which can begin anytime after sunrise and before the Zuhr (ظُهْر), (the noon prayer).
A trusted faculty member quickly addressed the situation and followed up with the parents of those students. A conversation ensued, which included Head of Upper School for nine years, Matt Norcini.
In an interview with him, he was asked “Were you or any staff helping to plan the event, aware that it would fall on Eid?”
Mr. Norcini, when scheduling graduation, was not aware of the conflict. “I think for many of us who don’t celebrate or recognize Eid in that way, we didn’t even think to look at June. – It was a lack of awareness by the school, and then families who were going to be impacted saying like ‘uh oh’, can you do something about it?’
The faculty began to delve deeper into this unfortunate predicament. At first, the administration considered changing the date of graduation. However, the event had been planned almost 2 years prior, and it was too late to make any changes to the date.
“I was saddened when I had initially heard about it, you want all parts of your identity to be welcomed and having such a big day in regards to your student identity as graduation being put up against one’s religious identity is conflicting and sometimes overwhelming,” said Director of Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging Maxime Sinal.
As Mr. Norcini and the members involved were hit with this realization, it quickly turned into a new conversation, one with the individual families, who had initially brought up the topic, and were impacted by the problem
“Some families said, ‘I just need a little bit of a shift in time. Others said the whole day. It was really problematic. So we started to look at, and work with those families. [It was all about]] making sure that families didn’t feel rushed for what is a really important celebratory day,” said Norcini.
With an inability to move the date of senior graduation, SCH’s faculty instead decided to push back the time of graduation. However, modifying the time of a massive and important event was not easy.
The administration met with those behind the logistics of graduation and others involved in the planning of the event.
It was time to really solidify that the time alteration wasn’t colliding with any other schedules, and that everyone involved was happy with the final result.
Norcini added “Particularly before I make a big decision, I know like, [I’ve] got a million and one blind spots, so I try and figure out who are the people who can see into those spots or live in those spots that I can’t.”
One of the last groups Mr. Norcini consulted was the parent association, specifically the senior’s parent representatives.
“The parents came back enthusiastically, like, ‘Yes, absolutely we can move it, the only request we have is, announce it sooner rather than later,’ and so once we had confirmed logistically we could do it, – and it felt like for most of the families for whom this was a conflict, this would resolve most of it then it was a no-brainer, let’s just do it.”
Soon after, SCH’s faculty wrapped up the planning with each of the groups, and the email about the change was sent out to seniors and their families on a Monday in late January. The efficiency and deep understanding of the people working in front and behind the scenes at SCH was put on full display during this conflict.
