Since 1988, GDS has usually held its high school graduation at George Washington University’s Lisner Auditorium. Due to renovations this year, Lisner was not available. Administrators then decided to hold graduation at Washington Hebrew Congregation but two weeks later pivoted to the lower/middle school gym.
On March 8, seniors Lina Fawaz and Aidan Mostashari learned Washington Hebrew was the new venue in an email to seniors outlining upcoming events. They each reached out via email to High School Principal Yom Fox and Head of School Russell Shaw to ask to meet regarding their concerns about hosting graduation at Washington Hebrew.
In those meetings, Fawaz and Mostashari expressed their objections to a GDS graduation being held in a synagogue, especially one that openly supports Israel in the Israel-Palestine war.
Fawaz and Mostashari each had a meeting with both Fox and Shaw in mid-March.
In an interview with the Bit, Shaw said that it was not a mistake to schedule the graduation at Washington Hebrew.
In an email to the Bit, Shaw added that once Lisner fell through, the GDS advancement team examined a variety of options and eventually settled on reserving Washington Hebrew. In March, the administration found a way to increase the capacity of the lower/middle school gym with the addition of a door and more efficient seating.
According to the two seniors, Shaw and Fox told them that they would keep their concerns in mind when considering a change for the graduation venue. Leaving their meetings, both seniors had the impression that the graduation venue was going to be changed.
On March 21, Shaw and Fox sent an email to seniors and their parents announcing that the high school graduation would be moved from the synagogue to the GDS campus in the lower/middle school gym.
“We heard a range of feedback around our originally announced venue for graduation — some were enthusiastic, others had questions,” the March 21 email from Shaw and Fox read.
In interviews with the Bit, Shaw and Fox said that GDS has aimed to host graduation on campus since the completion of the campaign to unite the lower/middle school and the high school in 2020.
According to Fawaz’s account of her meeting, administrators planned to use Washington Hebrew as the venue in the summer of 2023, before the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas.
She added that both Fox and Shaw apologized for having initially scheduled the graduation at Washington Hebrew without fully considering the political and religious implications of the venue.
Both Shaw and Fox declined to comment on what students said in private meetings.
“I am pretty sure that what I said in those conversations is that we have been looking at the possibility of having graduation at school,” Shaw said.
Mostashari said that Shaw and Fox told him that the school would not host graduation at a venue that would make some students uncomfortable.
According to Shaw, the graduation was moved because the school wanted to hold it on campus.
Washington Hebrew has raised money for the Friends of the Israeli Defense Forces (FIDF) organization. According to Washington Hebrew’s website, the synagogue has raised $50,000 for the FIDF. (FIDF is a New York–based non-profit that directs money to the IDF for non–combat related funding, such as medical supplies.)
Giving money to “an occupying force is immoral and not something that GDS should be doing,” Mostashari said.
In an email to the Bit, Shaw said that GDS was prepared to pay a rental fee to Washington Hebrew in the tens of thousands of dollars.
Senior Raphael Wolf said that hosting the graduation at Washington Hebrew would not equate to GDS’ endorsement of the synagogue’s values. “Just because Washington Hebrew has made some donations to FIDF doesn’t mean that GDS supports the IDF and [Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin] Netanyahu and the killing of innocent civilians,” he said
The synagogue also displays a banner that reads, “We support Israel in its struggle for peace and security” on the outside of the building, facing Massachusetts Avenue.
“By giving those donations, to me, that’s inherently supporting the occupation that’s put upon my people and the genocide that’s put upon my people,” Fawaz said. Fawaz is of Palestinian descent.
The communications team at Washington Hebrew did not respond to a request for comment.
Mostashari said that the timing of the graduation was important. “A year ago, I probably wouldn’t have had a problem with hosting the graduation at Washington Hebrew. What might have been okay then is not okay now,” he said, referring to Washington Hebrew’s support of Israel following the Oct. 7 attacks. “I think Russell [Shaw] really recognized that the nature of the situation was different, which I was proud of as a GDS student,” he added.
“I don’t think GDS should be contributing to an organization that is picking a side in the Israel-Palestine conflict,” Mostashari said.
“American synagogues are places where Jews gather to worship,” Shaw said. “It is really important we value those spaces.” He added that GDS will continue to have a relationship with Washington Hebrew and that future GDS events might be held there, even though the graduation will not be.
Choir concerts and the Benjamin Cooper Memorial Lecture, an annual speaker series hosted by GDS, have been held at Washington Hebrew in the past.
“Some of my Zionist friends agreed with me that it was weird to have the graduation at Washington Hebrew,” Mostashari said. “They recognize that it’s not right for some of their classmates to not feel comfortable at graduation,” he added.
According to the March 21 email, Shaw and Fox originally did not believe it was possible to host the graduation on campus. “While we wanted to have this culminating event at school, we ran into obstacles when contemplating the switch for this year, specifically around seating capacity,” the email read.
Shaw explained that the graduation ceremony is planned by a committee that consists of himself, twelfth-grade dean Marjorie Hale, members of the external affairs team, Director of Community Relations Joyce DePass and High School Principal Yom Fox.
Hale declined to comment for this article.
Fox told the Bit that her involvement in choosing the location for the graduation ceremony was minimal. “In terms of my role, they basically tell me where I’m supposed to be,” she said. “I don’t have a huge role to play in terms of location.”
Director of Operations and Innovation Tim Lyons said that in its current state, the occupancy limit in the lower/middle school gym is not high enough to accommodate visitors for the graduation.
Lyons explained that he sought help from “an architect and occupancy expert to raise the occupancy number by cutting a new door.” In D.C., zoning laws govern the maximum occupancy of a room based on the number of exits. The new door will raise the occupancy limit of the lower/middle school gym by adding an exit.
According to Shaw, the door has not yet been built, but it is expected to be a “quick project.”
Additionally, Shaw and Lyons believe that the original inspectors might have underestimated the capacity of the lower/middle school gym when it was first built. Shaw added that administrators might have the capacity re-evaluated in the future, but likely not before this year’s graduation.
Lyons said he began planning the new door in the gym at the beginning of the school year. He added that while Washington Hebrew was an option, his understanding was that “the desire was to have it at school.”
Initially, Shaw said that the committee thought the most efficient way to seat people in the gym was to use bleachers and rows of chairs. “It turns out that if you don’t use the bleachers and instead pull out chairs, you can actually fit more people,” he said.
Shaw told the Bit that an event planner, who was working on another project for the school, told the committee that they could create more seating space.
Shaw said that crowd size and capacity have been a problem in the past, even at Lisner. “We’ve had years where we have a huge amount of ticket requests, and we have had to put people on wait lists. We’ve also had years with plenty of open seats,” he said.
According to the senior resource page on MyGDS, this year seniors will be allowed to bring a maximum of five guests to the graduation ceremony. The resource page directs seniors to email DePass if they anticipate having more than the allotted five.
According to Shaw, it is not clear whether the lower/middle school gym will be able to hold all those who plan to attend. “If this were a year where we have, for whatever reason, lots of demand for tickets, we could live stream it in the flex space and have overflow there,” Shaw said.
Senior Luke Fedorchak was critical of the school’s decision to allow only five invitations per student. “That gives you your parents—if you’re a person who has both parents—and then three other people. That’s not very many, especially if you’re someone who has grandparents or siblings coming,” he said.
“The goal of the graduation is a celebration and an honoring of seniors and their families and friends,” Fox said. “In terms of location, you are looking for a spot that fits the community comfortably,” she added.
Senior Ben Fitzpayne, a co-head of the Jewish Student Coalition (JSC), said that while he did not object to hosting the graduation at Washington Hebrew, he could see why students might take issue with it. “It could perhaps alienate certain people in our community, and that could indicate that switching the venue could be beneficial,” he said.
(Fitzpayne is a reporter for the Bit.)
“I understand that having the graduation in a synagogue can easily make people feel like the graduation is tied to religion,” Wolf said. He added that he would be comfortable with a graduation in a synagogue, church or mosque, especially if “GDS had a long-standing tradition of having graduations or events there.”
“GDS has certain events at churches and other religious spaces, and I think there is a slight difference for graduation, but for me personally, I have no issues with a non-secular space being used in a secular manner,” Fitzpayne said.
“There was obviously some reason they moved the graduation from Washington Hebrew, and they weren’t very open about what it was,” Wolf said.
“I think people are still really excited,” senior Julian Montes-Sharp said. “I don’t think a venue change is going to dampen any sort of the meaning behind the graduation, the excitement about it, and the fact that we’re graduating and moving on from GDS. It might even be more meaningful because it’s taking place at GDS,” he added.
Song said he did not believe that the controversy about graduation had dampened the spirit of the graduating class. “At the end of the day, I think people are just happy to graduate,” he said.
“There’s definitely some people in our class who supported moving the graduation away from Washington Hebrew and there’s some people who don’t really care at all,” Fawaz said. “I haven’t heard of anyone who is fully against moving it,” she added.
“The Israel-Palestine conflict is an issue that people probably talk about at the dinner table and not as much in their classes or in front of their classmates,” Wolf said.
Six of the 14 seniors interviewed by the Bit said they had heard discussions among classmates about the change of venue, mostly centered on questions about capacity. None of the 14 had any objection to moving the graduation away from Washington Hebrew for political reasons.
“I agree with it being moved,” Fedorchak said. “I think that the current circumstances are just inherently bad. If it had been an option, I would have preferred it to be at Lisner.”
The administration has not released any further communication about graduation to seniors and their families since the March 21 email.