While seniors are finishing their college applications and their courses as they are deciding what they want to accomplish in their future, many additionally stress about a trivial detail: cords. Graduation cords are awarded through participation in various clubs, given to seniors to wear as they walk the stage at graduation and receive their diploma. They’re awarded to symbolize a student’s genuine effort and time in a club; however, graduation cords have become a symbol of educational ostentation.

Many seniors are influenced by peer pressure to join a large number of clubs to attain cords. Cords have become a frivolous detail so that the student doesn’t look less involved than his or her peers. This has led many students to join random clubs for their last year of high school.

This is detrimental for two reasons. Joining a club for a student’s senior year doesn’t have any benefits. It can waste a senior’s time and seniors’ college application may seem scattered if their involvement in the club doesn’t tie into their other extracurricular activities. Seniors have other things to prioritize, such as jobs, college applications, and scholarships, and don’t need to worry about another club they don’t find an interest in.

Another point that makes this senior behavior unreasonable is that cords have no actual value. Many seniors fall under the allusive curse of senior year and realize this. The day after graduation, students could throw away their graduation cords and not lose anything of significance.

Senior Ahmad Hasan said, “Although Rho Kappa is a brilliant club, an incentive to join the club was the cord because I don’t want to look less involved than my friends at graduation.”

In addition, it creates an influx of careless club members who only care for the cord at the end of the year. This becomes annoying for students who actually care about the clubs they are involved in.

The president of Best Buddies at Seminole High, senior Jocelyn Correa, found a way to get around the issue of uninvolved seniors. “You need to show up to a certain amount of meetings at Millennium to get a cord because if you don’t have a relationship with the buddy you can’t say that you’re a part of the club,” Correa said. “I feel like more clubs should have requirements about a certain amount of meetings you need to go to to get a cord.”

Many schools have found their way around these problems. For example, DeLand High School only allows a graduate to wear two cords of their choice when walking. This stops seniors from joining random clubs they don’t care for just to show off their cords at graduation.

DeLand High School student, Kaitlyn Boncaro said, “At  first it seemed like the two cord limit restricted us,  but it doesn’t create the problem that other high schools have with seniors joining clubs just for the cord. It doesn’t put stress on us to join more clubs to look as involved in the school as other graduates.”

Although cords would be nice as a sentimental piece to remind students of their high school involvement and passions, it’s sad to say that they have become no more than a superficial item to collect and show off during senior graduation.