Congrats Grads!
The Maundy Monday Newsletter - This Week in History June 8 -14.
The months of May and June bring with them an annual ritual that has been an American tradition for a long time – the school graduation.
I work right down the street from a university in one direction and an all-girls high school in another, plus there is a grade school attached to the parish where I work, so I have been surrounded by all types of graduates for the past couple of weeks.
One thing all of these students will experience – they will move on to another unknown situation, which will require growth, maturity, and an understanding that life never goes in reverse – just straight ahead – whether you are ready or not.
This weekend, my family had a graduation party for my niece and nephew, who graduated from high school last week, which doesn’t seem possible, but it is. Now they will spend the precious few weeks of summer celebrating – before freshman orientation begins in the Fall.
Mary and Timmy are fraternal twins who are absolutely top-notch kids.1 I’m extremely proud to be their uncle. I have played absolutely no role in how well they are growing up. My brother and sister-in-law deserve all the credit in the world. Mary and Timmy are kind, smart, hardworking young people – and I can’t wait to see how they continue their educational journey.
Since this is the last of the Dake family high school graduations and we are approaching the country’s 250th anniversary, I thought it would be interesting to see how the high school graduating class of 2026 compares to the one that graduated 50 years ago, when the bicentennial was celebrated.
Since both grads are going to state schools in Virginia (considered an excellent state for higher education), I took a look at three big categories when it comes to the college experience:
Cost:
In 1976, the average college tuition in a Virginia state school was around $525, and when you added room and board, the total came to just over $2,100.2 Timmy and Mary will spend just over $16,000 a year on tuition alone. If they want to live and eat while at school, the costs climb to $40,000 – and thank goodness they are in-state residents. Someone who gets into the University of Virginia but doesn’t live in the Commonwealth and still chooses to attend will end up paying over $56,000.3
One interesting note about the rising cost: Virginia used to cover 70% of in-state college costs. It now covers 58%. The state has generously made up the difference by allowing residents to continue living in Virginia.
Technology:
Once the kids hit the back-to-school sales and unload their stuff into their dorms, both will be armed with high-powered laptops, cell phones, and, more importantly, artificial intelligence. Virginia is among the top states for AI adoption among 18-24-year-olds, alongside New York, New Jersey, and California.4
The kids who graduated in the summer of 1976 entered the fall with typewriters and whiteout. They called their parents on pay phones, and if they sought intelligence, it was usually at the library, looking up card catalogs to find books with important information.
It goes without saying that Timmy and Mary’s classmates know a thing or two about the power of instant action and results. But then again, it’s hard to say you misplaced a term paper when your professor knows you can just find it in a cloud.
Demographics:
The way college campuses look when America celebrates 250 years is wildly different from how they looked in 1976, when campuses like UVA were made up of 30% women.
Where college campuses were overwhelmingly white 50 years ago, today they are made up of more nonwhite students.
Spare a thought for the UVA student working in the alumni office trying to plan a 50-year homecoming reunion: there aren’t many 70-something women to invite, because the school had only just gotten around to letting them in.5
So college is more expensive, has more powerful technology, and has more diversity than it did when I entered the world, and when 18-year-olds in Virginia went off to college. Lots can change in 50 years – imagine what college will be like for my brother’s grandchildren.
Okay, let’s get to what else happened this week. As a reminder, these events mark anniversaries ending in 5 or 0.
1. The NFL and AFL announced they would merge on June 8, 1966. By the mid-1950s, the National Football League had a strong grip on the sport’s growing popularity, thanks to television and rising viewership and attendance. The league wasn’t interested in expanding and increasing that wealth – so owners who were rejected from purchasing an NFL franchise formed their own league, the American Football League, in 1959. Picking cities that didn’t have NFL teams proved wise, and so the leagues were competing so much against each other - that when the NFL went out and signed a kicker from an AFL team, all hell broke out, and they merged. Now there are two conferences – the NFC, which features original NFL teams, and the AFC, which is made up of mostly AFL teams. They smashed the leagues together officially in 1970, even though the first Championship game with teams from different leagues was played in 1967.6 The league’s combined net worth is over $227 billion. I don’t think either Mary or Timmy will be studying business in school, but if they are smart – perhaps pre-law in antitrust would be a strong move.
2. The Committee of Five was appointed on June 11, 1776. Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston were appointed by the Second Continental Congress to draft a declaration of independence. Jefferson then lost a game of “Not It!” and had to write the entire thing himself. He did so well, we now capitalize the “D” and “I”. Two other committees were also formed that day- don’t get the impression the rest of Congress did nothing while Tommy J did all the heavy literary lifting. Mary seems more like the committee type of the two, but Timmy was the MVP of his lacrosse team this year - so it shows he is a team player.
3. The U.S. Census Bureau got a big computer on June 14, 1951. The Universal Automatic Computer (UNIVAC) was engineered by two really smart guys from the University of Pennsylvania, and it was the first commercially available computer to begin the laborious work of counting people and sorting them into categories. It also predicted President Eisenhower’s landslide victory in the 1952 presidential election – when polls had it close.7 The UNIVAC is the great-grandfather of the AI boom, which can now help the twins add up the tip on their DoorDash app when ordering a late-night pizza.
Saturday was a fun party – all of us are the age where all we want to do is just catch up with other family members we haven’t seen in a while. A few cousins who live out in Virginia joined as well, and while it hasn’t sunk in yet that the twins are off to college, I still can’t get over how incredibly tall they are. Also, I’m grateful I didn’t end up eating both styles of graduation cake. These are the observations you have when you turn 50.
It was also nice spending a few days with my older sister, who came to town on Thursday, and showing her around the neighborhood. She has the cutest dog, little Brownie:
She’s a shih tzu poodle, and I’ll let you come up with the new name for the combined dog. Just the sweetest dog ever, who is now charged with taking care of my sibling. Can’t wait to see her again!8
Okay, thanks everyone for your support of Okay History. I hope you have a great week.
Okay,
Chris
Names changed to avoid having to ask for permission.
UVA only admitted women beginning in 1970.
The first “Super Bowl” was in 1969, when UVA only admitted men.
The sister. And the dog.
The AFL set a rival-the-established-league model that would later be emulated by the ABA in professional basketball and the WHA in professional hockey. Despite initial success, financial troubles eventually forced these two leagues to merge with the one they had once rebelled against.