COLORADO SPRINGS – Air Force Academy seniors will graduate six weeks early in an impromptu online ceremony intended to empty the campus of its remaining cadets amid the coronavirus pandemic, academy leaders said. It’s a move the military has not seen since World War II.
The academy would send about 1,000 seniors into the officer ranks without the traditional graduation ceremony that has drawn of tens of thousands of friends and family members and would have been attended by Vice President Mike Pence, The Gazette reported Wednesday.
“About 30,000 people come in and they stay for five days,” said Doug Price, who heads Visit Colorado Springs, adding that the decision is expected to leave an estimated $25 million hole in the region’s tourism economy.
“This crisis is a war,” said Dick Rauschkolb, a 1970 academy graduate who is planning with his classmates to assign each cadet with their new insignia of rank.
Academy leaders have already started planning an online version of the ceremony designed to replace the traditional graduation in Falcon Stadium and a host of other preceding celebrations, including individual swearing-in ceremonies.
“We have made herculean efforts thus far to graduate the class of 2020 and within a few weeks we will see this come to fruition,” superintendent Lt. Gen. Jay Silveria said in a statement.
The Air Force Academy is the first of the military academies to plan an early online graduation. West Point and Naval Academy arrangements have yet to be determined.
The Air Force Academy has never hosted an early graduation, but the U.S. Military Academy at West Point made different arrangements for graduation during the Civil War, World War I and World War II.
