"Graduation in Uvalde gives tragedy-stricken town a night of normality"

STORYTELLING CATEGORY

The Texas Tribune
06/25/2022

Gabby Quirova wanted to have a normal high school graduation. What happened in her hometown on May 24 made that impossible. That’s the day an 18-year-old former student with an AR-style assault rifle entered Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, a small, Hispanic-majority town near the Texas-Mexico border, and opened fire, killing 19 children and two teachers.

The Uvalde High School graduation had been scheduled for later that week. Nearly a month later, the graduates finally had their day.

Texas Tribune reporter Ariana Perez-Castells and photographer Kylie Cooper spent days in Uvalde ahead of graduation night and met Quirova, who agreed to let the journalists follow her for the day as she prepared for what, in Uvalde, would serve as the first community event since the shooting that didn’t focus on the shooting. They went to her hair appointment early in the day, then back to her house as the family prepared to head to the stadium for the ceremony.

They managed to score tickets to the event — which was closed to the public — from the  students and be there with Quirova and the other seniors in the class of 2022 finally walked the stage and celebrated a rite of passage, even while managing their community’s overwhelming sense of grief and loss. Some of the students we spoke with are determined to return to Uvalde as educators.  

This work spoke to the ability of our Tribune journalists building trust and connection with members of the community. And you can see through the writing and the photos the type of access they were able to get, which is what makes this story so strong. It allows the viewer to step into Uvalde for a day and follow one person’s story.

This was a very visual story thanks to that access. Cooper’s photography put our audience in Uvalde for the day, with vivid visual storytelling of each step from the hair salon to the moment the graduates flung their caps into the air, under the watchful eyes of police who were providing security. For Uvalde, it was a brief moment of normalcy amid a month of shock and grief, and Perez-Castells and Cooper showed our audience another side of the town that had been absent during intense news coverage since the shooting.

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Submitted by Sewell Chan.