Last toast to a difficult and uncertain year

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Every attendee at the Last Toast event had a champagne flute and congratulatory card shipped to them by the CSA. CREDIT: CENTRAL STUDENT ASSOCIATION

ALLAN SLOAN

VP of Student Experience Sara Kuwatly (left) and undergrad speaker Katie Vaughan (right) toast to a challenging year during the 2021 Last Toast event. CREDIT: CENTRAL STUDENT ASSOCIATION

For university students, graduation is a time to reflect on all of the years of study, hard work, determination, lack of sleep, and educational breakthroughs one’s experienced. It’s also usually the time to proudly walk across the stage in front of friends and family and collect your diploma.

This year, however, that won’t be happening. While the students of the University of Guelph will be graduating, they won’t be walking across the stage.

To celebrate students’ time as undergrads, the Central Student Association (CSA) and Alumni Affairs & Development had to host their annual Last Toast event online this year. During the event, 140 graduating students heard a short speech from Gryphon alumnus Courtney De Caire welcoming them into the U of G Alumni family. In addition, students heard a speech from fellow graduating student Kathryn Vaughan, who reflected on her time in Guelph.

During the event students also voted on a charity fund to donate a portion of the ticket sales to. This year the students voted to donate to the Mental Health and Well-Being Fund, which, according to its website, was established in January 2018 and supports existing and emerging on-campus programs to promote mental health, resiliency and well-being for U of G students.

Sara Kuwatly, VP of student experience at the CSA, told The Ontarion that while the Last Toast event is usually held in person at the Brass Taps on campus, the current stay-at-home order forced them to change their normal way of doing things.

“Although we had plans to livestream from Brass Taps to maintain some sort of normalcy, the stay-at-home order started on the same day of the event, so we live streamed from our respective homes instead,” Kuwatly said.

Despite staying at home for the event, students still received a “Forever A Gryphon” champagne flute from the CSA to commemorate their time.

“This year was different because we had to come up with a plan to ship the champagne flutes to students who purchased one,” Kuwatly said. “With the help of different campus partners, mainly Hospitality Services, we were able to ship over 200 champagne flutes to students who purchased them. We kept the tickets at the same price to cover shipping and labor.”

The challenges with Last Toast weren’t the only challenges the CSA faced when planning events this year. CSA President Tyler Poirier told The Ontarion that event planning was a learning curve all year.

“In September, we had no idea how successful events might be. We have learned a lot, and when it comes to events, we felt it necessary to emphasize what students need right now: a break. Everyone has been on their screens for too long, and we’ve often thought about how we can al-

leviate some of the stress students are feeling,” Poirier said.

Poirier also said that they turned to platforms like Twitch to bring more students together in ways that were socially-safe for everyone, and offered give-aways to promote interaction with the student body. For those about to graduate, Poirier has some words of advice to share:

“What I do want to emphasize is that even though graduates won’t be walking across a stage, take the time to celebrate your journey and create some closure for your undergraduate experience. Get in touch with those friends who were with you throughout your degree (virtually, of course), tell those professors how much you appreciate them, and recognize how much of your own hard work and dedication it took to get you where you are. You did it, and all of us at the CSA are proud of each and every graduating student for powering through this complex last year.”