The Communication Arts and Sciences (CAS) class of 2026 graduated on the evening of Wednesday, May 20, 2026 at The Freight, closing out their years together with a ceremony that gave every senior a moment to speak.<\/p>\n
All attending graduates took the stage. Before each one spoke, pictures of them appeared on a screen while a teacher offered a specific, considered, and often funny tribute. Then the graduate had the mic to themselves for as long as they needed.<\/p>\n
Most thanked their families and teachers by name. Some got specific \u2014 thanking teachers for extensions, for random dance parties, for teaching them how to copy and paste on a computer. Others went deeper, talking about what it meant to find a community inside a big school. \u201cWhen I first joined CAS, I wasn\u2019t really good at writing professionally,\u201d Yasmin Barad, a CAS senior, said. \u201cI cried because I didn\u2019t know what ethos was. But now I wrote a ten-page thesis,\u201d Barad said.<\/p>\n
Derrick Michael Coney and Ailsa Collier were named recipients of the Kyle Hardy Strang Spirit of CAS Award, given in memory of a student who died while in the program to seniors who have crossed barriers of class, gender, and race and lived according to their values.<\/p>\n
Collier, the evening\u2019s opening speaker, captured a feeling other graduates echoed. \u201cI thrived within a community of people who felt like they wanted to be there,\u201d she said. \u201cI have made friends for life in CAS.\u201d<\/p>\n
For some, CAS was a lifeline they didn\u2019t know they needed. Keely Shaller, who joined as a sophomore, described nearly leaving Berkeley High School altogether before finding the program. \u201cI was really scared,\u201d she said. \u201cBut I did something really scary, and I kept going, and went to CAS, and it\u2019s made me braver than I ever thought I could be,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Others arrived mid-program and still found their footing quickly. Jordan Fenigstein transferred in junior year, walking into her first CAS class not knowing anyone. \u201cOne by one, everyone introduced themselves to me,\u201d she said. \u201cLittle did I know, this group of people would become my closest friends,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
It was a sentiment that came up again and again throughout the night \u2014 that CAS had a way of making people feel at home faster than they expected, and that leaving it felt harder than they had anticipated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Communication Arts and Sciences (CAS) class of 2026 graduated on the evening of Wednesday, May 20, 2026…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":348454,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[143,145,144],"class_list":["post-348453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=348453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348453\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/348454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}