By the slot machines, there is a sign directing the class of 2020 to the pool. It’s 2024, and the graduating class in question is finally old enough to attend their own party, the 2020 Stadium Swim Grad Splash at Circa, a 21-and-older casino and hotel in downtown Las Vegas. The event is intended as a do-over for Clark County School District students who didn’t get to have a high school graduation party during the early days of COVID-19. It is sponsored by Prime Hydration, a beverage cofounded by influencer/aspiring wrestler Logan Paul, and White Claw, a malt beverage I know well and will get to know even better over the next five hours. The casino is cool and dark, and I ride a series of escalators to the promised pool party, which is not for me.
Earlier, Mike Palm, Circa’s vice president of operations, told me about the construction of the casino, which took place while the 2020 grads were studying algebra on Zoom and riding bicycles down a deserted Las Vegas Boulevard. “Circa was born out of the pandemic,” Palm said. “The majority of the construction occurred during 2020, and in some ways, it benefited us in that, for that 11-week shutdown, we didn’t have any neighbors to disturb with noise, so we were able to work 24/7.”
Today, there is a Kesha song playing, and at the top of the final escalator there is abundant sunlight, a Class of 2020 step-and-repeat, and friendly women who give me a wristband and a White Claw, my first of the day. It’s noon, and a digital sign at the top of nearby Binion’s Gambling Hall says it’s 103 degrees. Standing in the hot daylight on the rooftop pool deck, I feel like an offering for a malevolent god, which is a standard Las Vegas day club experience.
Upon first impression, that’s what this graduation party feels like: any other day club. Stadium Swim, as the pool complex at Circa is called, consists of six pools on three levels, all facing a 40-foot-tall screen where multiple athletic events are broadcast simultaneously. The soundtrack is “Pour It Up” by Rihanna, “Shots” by Lil Jon, and other songs that mention Patrón Tequila. There are hotel guests mixed in with party guests — I can tell who is who based on wristband color — and I am trying to locate the feeling of a high school graduation, but my only reference point is my own graduation many years ago in an auditorium in New Hampshire. Here, there is a private “super cabana” that I’m told is the heart of the party, where women in bikinis wear blue graduation caps. There are more graduation caps on lounge chairs and a man in a “Wish You Were Beer” hat sinking the perfect beer pong shot. I take another free White Claw and survey the scene.
Most of the 2020 grads seem happy as they pose for selfies, lounge on day beds, and enjoy free drinks, free food, and the promise of $15 off an Uber ride home when the party ends, but there are a few on the outside of the crowd who lean against the wall, looking uncomfortable, dejected even, as they scroll their phones. I recognize their expressions. In the fall of 2021, when Las Vegas really started to reopen, I began teaching at UNLV. We were in person for the first time in a long time, and as I stood in front of the room on that first day, I saw eyes full of grief, anxiety, and in some cases, a blankness that indicated there was nothing left to feel at all. Most of my students had come from Clark County School District; they were these same 2020 grads. In the quiet moments before class started, they often stared straight ahead as if unsure how to talk to each other. Sometimes, anti-mask and anti-vax protestors taunted them outside of the library. They wrote essays about a spring break that turned into a lost year. Dark bedrooms and virtual classrooms. Cameras off, so it was impossible to tell how anyone was doing, who was even really there. They wrote about family members and friends who got sick and then died, and something else they knew they’d lost: adolescence.
Looking around the party, I can tell that many have found themselves again while others are still searching. I approach a table where two 2020 grads are eating french fries. “How do you feel being here?” I ask.
One leans in, tells me her name is Elizabeth, and asks me if she can be honest.
“Sure,” I say.
“I feel like we got robbed of an actual graduation, which kind of makes me jealous of kids in 2023 and 2024 who got actual graduations,” she says. “We graduated in, like, a school auditorium.” She pauses and considers the scene around us — people in graduation caps tumbling into the water, an endless parade of bikini-clad cocktail servers hoisting trays of cheeseburger sliders overhead — and then she smiles slightly and adds, “But this makes up for it a little bit.”
In a cabana where there are chicken fingers and more White Claws, I talk to David and Xander, who had a small graduation in their high school cafeteria.
“It was really weird because it was at our school,” Xander says. “I saw my older sister graduate at the Orleans casino.”
A Pitbull song plays, the bass shaking the wall beside us. At the poolside casino, people open up wallets, their money wet from the pool.
“It’s nice being here,” David says. “The sense of community is really nice.”
I fill a plate with chicken fingers and eat them in the pool. The Binion’s sign says it’s 106 degrees. On the big screen, in between a baseball game and a golf tournament, there is a slideshow of 2020 grads: one in an apartment bathroom wearing a cap and gown, another in a driveway, a backyard, on an empty sidewalk in front of the Bellagio. I swim over to two girls on the edge of the pool, holding damp diplomas with the Circa logo on them.
Elise, who is from Mesquite, drove an hour to come to Circa. “This feels like a Vegas graduation,” she says. “This is what I imagined. A party, a pool.”
There is no trace of Wow what a novelty in her voice or in anyone’s voice, and as I open another White Claw, I realize that this is what I’ve been looking for: someone to acknowledge what a uniquely Vegas experience this is. Unique in the way that grocery store slot machines are unique. Unique in the way that seeing an Elvis impersonator at the gym is unique. But uniquely Vegas is only unique to a transplant, a tourist, a parachute journalist. To these Clark County School District students, most born and raised in Las Vegas, there is nothing unique about this graduation party. And that’s the point. This is the party they’ve longed for, not because it is weird and wild in an only in Vegas way, but because it feels like home. They expected a graduation ceremony at the Orleans complete with a drink menu — $21 cocktails for adults, $6 bottled water for everyone else. Graduating in a cafeteria, which might have felt ordinary to high school students elsewhere, was strange and disorienting to them.
In the chicken finger line, Xander had told me, “I think it’s a good party. It’s a nice hot day with a pool and some food.” And at the time, I’d wished for a less matter-of-fact answer. But now I get it.
The party continues. There are more White Claws. There is a DJ imploring the crowd to get loose. One girl tells me she is late for her shift at Caesars, that she is thinking of calling out. Drunk and happy, people stretch out on water couches, a term I just learned that others already knew. Soon, there will be a $10,000 giveaway sponsored by Prime Hydration. There will be champagne showers. Lights will illuminate Fremont Street below, marking the start of another Las Vegas night.
At last, for the class of 2020, something normal.