<p>Would the army allow a surprise proposal in the middle of a boot camp graduation ceremony?</p>
<p>^ good point!</p>
<p>college President stopped the girl and announced that her active duty Marine brother, also waiting in the wings, had made it to the ceremony. Her parents had told her he wasn’t going to be able to make it, but knew for a while he was coming and planned the surprise with the help of the university.</p>
<p>totally ok…special exceptions should be made for those who put themselves in harms way to serve our country. Absolutely.</p>
<p>The proposal…little odd. Save that for the grad party with the fam.</p>
<p>Would the army allow a surprise proposal in the middle of a boot camp graduation ceremony?</p>
<p>Maybe not a proposal…but a surprise attendance…if the surprise was an active duty parent/sibling who was there for the ceremony. The military does bend some rules to accomodate others/relatives who are also serving…</p>
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<p>That’s not fair to those who STILL have those fighting oversees or those who will never have their family member come home. A graduation should NOT be a time for those kind of bad memories. Yes, it’s great for those that are coming home, but it’s NOT great for those who are still missing someone. A graduation should be a time of celebration. Could you imagine the painful memory that that would cause to someone whose brother or sister, husband or wife, or heck even child is not coming home? You have to consider things like that IMO. What a cloud that would put over those trying to celebrate if that were the case. Graduation is NOT just about that one person.</p>
<p>Not ok. Just not OK. Nope.</p>
<p>Neither of these things bothers me as much as when students do something really ridiculous at graduation. When I graduated from college, one of the students received her diploma in full clown regalia. Makeup, wig, floppy shoes, the works. There was no reason for this, as far as I can tell - it’s not like she received a degree in circus arts or something. I was a theatre major, and I know she was not in my department. Even if she was, I thought she looked like a jerk, and I hope she looks back on her behavior with mortification. If I were her mother, I would have killed her.</p>
<p>The worst behavior I’ve ever seen was two years ago when three moms arrived at 3:30 in the afternoon before graduation began at 7:00 and “reserved” all of the first 12 rows in the stadium using various beach towels, coolers, and such. If that wasn’t rude enough, others who arrived shortly after camped out in all of the handicap accessible seats in front of the regular bleachers. There were many grandparents who arrived and walked slowly up the ramps into the stadium using walkers and canes and then had to climb into the 13th row or higher to find a seat. We decided to give up our seats and stand rather than watch such a spectacle.</p>
<p>The yelling so you can’t hear the next person bothers me, and a public proposal seems out of place – but the military returns, I think of as our opportunity to share in a family’s joy and relief – which seems fitting for graduations! If the measurement of appropriateness is “doesn’t make anyone at all feel bad” then the whole graduation ceremony is fraught with pitfalls . Many of us have suffered loss and grief and pain. When I see someone else’s joy, it neither trivializes my losses, nor ignores them. It can be reminder of joys I had, and I choose to see it that way. My heart is big enough to allow for that. If there is a stampede of surprise reunions, then I can see a logistical problem, but as a singular event, not so much.</p>