CINCINNATI —

The Christ College of Nursing has trained thousands of health care leaders who have practiced near and far in its 120 years.

"So many have gone on, not only in this region but across the country, providing care for thousands upon thousands of patients," said VP of Strategy & Business Affairs Brad Jackson.

Saturday at the 120th commencement ceremony, 161 new graduates will be sent out into the field once again to help change the world.

"I'm definitely excited, but very nervous being as I am a new nurse and it's critical care unit, but I am very open to learning and I can't wait to learn all the new ropes," said RN, BSN graduate Brooke Kunstman.

Kunstman and at least two of her classmates will head straight into the action as intensive care unit nurses in the medical and surgical units at Christ Hospital.

Kylie Montgomery says COVID-19 wasn't a deterrent but preparation to head into the field with confidence.

"I believe health care workers are like firefighters or those people that run into the fight and COVID is our fire and this is our fight," Montgomery said.

A fight that has taken many out of the game, but nursing students like Joe Stinger, who believes he adds a valuable component to the field, say the pandemic mixed with the already rigorous coursework taught him to be resilient.

Stinger's part of the 7% of male nurse graduates in this year's class. He says more men should consider the field.

"Men are really viewed sometimes as being more , I guess more stern. We're just looked at as a little bit more intimidating. I want to make sure that our patients know that we care just as much as everybody else," Stinger said.

This is the first year since 2019 when many of the ceremonial traditions will be back to normal. Next year, the college will welcome a degree in diagnostic medical sonography.

RICHMOND, Va. —

A gunman opened fire as hundreds of people stood outside after a high school graduation ceremony Tuesday evening in Richmond, Virginia, killing two people and wounding five others, the city’s interim police chief said.

As merriment turned to terror around Richmond’s Monroe Park, other people were hurt as they tried to escape the gunfire, including a 9-year-old girl who was hit by a car, Richmond Interim Police Chief Rick Edwards told reporters Tuesday night.

Video above: Interim Police Chief Rick Edwards describes shooting scene

Police initially detained two people but later said one was not involved. The other – a 19-year-old who investigators think may have known one of the victims and had four handguns – was held Tuesday night and police will recommend two counts of second-degree murder against him, Edwards said.

Killed were an 18-year-old student who graduated Tuesday and a 36-year-old man who had attended the ceremony at a theater near the park. They were not identified.

The shooting happened at Monroe Park after Huguenot High School’s ceremony in the Altria Theater, Richmond Public Schools official Matthew Stanley said. The park is on Virginia Commonwealth University’s campus, across the street from the theater.

Besides the two killed, five others – a 14-year-old boy and four men ranging in age from 31 to 58 – suffered gunshot wounds. Four of those injured had non-life-threatening injuries, according to Edwards.

The 9-year-old struck by a car was being treated at a hospital Tuesday night with non-life-threatening injuries, Edwards said.

Three off-duty officers were working security at the ceremony and heard gunshots outside just before 5:15 p.m. ET. They radioed a call of shots fired and other officers who were working traffic duty responded, the interim police chief said at an earlier news conference.

The suspect fled the scene but was stopped and detained by VCU police.

“Is nothing sacred any longer? Is nothing sacred any longer?” Richmond Mayor Levar M. Stoney said at the first news conference.

The mayor promised whoever was involved would be brought to justice, “not just for the families involved but for the city.”

A different high school’s graduation ceremony that was scheduled for the theater after the Huguenot High ceremony was canceled, Stanley said. Graduation ceremonies for three schools were scheduled at Altria Theater on Tuesday, according to the school system’s website.

The graduation ceremony had ended, and graduates were outside taking photos with their families when the shooting happened, Richmond Public Schools Superintendent Jason Kamras said. Hundreds of people were in the park at the time, Edwards said.

“I don’t have any more words on this,” Kamras said. “I’m just tired of seeing people get shot, our kids get shot. And I beg of the entire community to stop.”

An alert sent at 5:15 p.m. by Virginia Commonwealth University says a shooting happened at Monroe Park. About an hour later, the alert page said there was no ongoing threat.

Two teens who were born into difficult situations are making their mark on the world thanks to a generous mother.Brothers Dennis Parker and Gordon Burrell are graduating from New Town High School in Baltimore County, Maryland. Their mother, Cecelia McFadden, helped them get ready for the big day. She took them in as foster children — Parker when he was a week old and Burrell at the age of 2.A few years later, she adopted them both. They credit McFadden with pushing them, even when they acted out."You got on my butt every day. I don't know, she always told the right things to do," Parker said.Burrell faced the added challenge of having severe hearing loss. He was bullied and called names at school."She brought me in and made sure we had everything. Without her, there would be no graduation," Burrell said of his mom.McFadden has fostered 15 children, adopted three and has two biological children."You get them so young, you get attached to them, you don't want to take them back," said McFadden.Burrell said his life could have been very different without McFadden."My life probably would've been messed up. I probably would've been in the streets, selling drugs, a lot of other stuff. She's there. She was the protector, the caregiver," Burrell said."We are losing too many males in the streets," McFadden said. "I said, 'You already have two things going wrong for you right now: You're Black and you're male.' I said, 'You need that education.' I said, 'If you get that education, no one can take that away from you. As long as you can read and write and count, you're going to be OK, You can make it.'"Burrell is off to study music in college, while Parker plans to learn a trade.

DENVER —

A federal judge ruled Friday that a rural Colorado school district can bar a high school student from wearing a Mexican and American flag sash at her graduation this weekend after the student sued the school district.

Judge Nina Y. Wang wrote that wearing a sash during a graduation ceremony falls under school-sponsored speech, not the student's private speech. Therefore, "the School District is permitted to restrict that speech as it sees fit in the interest of the kind of graduation it would like to hold," Wang wrote.

The ruling was over the student's request for a temporary restraining order, which would have allowed her to wear the sash on Saturday for graduation because the case wouldn't have been resolved in time. Wang found that the student and her attorneys failed to sufficiently show they were likely to succeed, but a final ruling is still to come.

It's the latest dispute in the U.S. about what kind of cultural graduation attire is allowed at commencement ceremonies, with many focusing on tribal regalia.

Attorneys for Naomi Peña Villasano argued in a hearing Friday in Denver that the school district decision violates her free speech rights. They also said that it's inconsistent for the district to allow Native American attire but not Peña Villasano's sash representing her heritage. The sash has the Mexican flag on one side and the United States flag on the other.

"I'm a 200 percenter — 100% American and 100% Mexican," she said at a recent school board meeting in Colorado's rural Western Slope.

"The district is discriminating against the expression of different cultural heritages," said her attorney Kenneth Parreno, from the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, at Friday's hearing.

An attorney representing the Garfield County School District 16 countered that Native American regalia is required to be allowed in Colorado and is categorically different from wearing a country's flags. Permitting Peña Villasano to sport the U.S. and Mexican flags as a sash, said Holly Ortiz, could open "the door to offensive material."

Ortiz further stated that the district doesn't want to prevent Peña Villasano from expressing herself and that the graduate could adorn her cap with the flags or wear the sash before or after the ceremony.

But "she doesn't have a right to express it in any way that she wants," Ortiz said.

Wang sided with the district, finding that "the School District could freely permit one sash and prohibit another."

Similar disputes have played out across the U.S. this graduation season.

A transgender girl lodged a lawsuit against a Mississippi school district for banning her from wearing a dress to graduation. In Oklahoma, a Native American former student brought legal action against a school district for removing a feather, a sacred religious object, from her cap before the graduation ceremony in 2022.

What qualifies as proper graduation attire has been a source of conflict for Native American students around the country. Both Nevada and Oklahoma on Thursday passed laws allowing Native American students to wear religious and cultural regalia at graduation ceremonies.

This year, Colorado passed a law making it illegal to keep Native American students from donning such regalia. Nearly a dozen states have similar laws.

The legal arguments often come down to whether the First Amendment protects personal expression, in this case the sash, or if it would be considered school-sponsored speech, and could be limited for educational purposes.

A Dallas high school valedictorian scrapped a speech approved by her school administrators and delivered an abortion rights call in its place.Paxton Smith, the 2021 valedictorian at Lake Highlands High School, submitted to school officials an address on the effect of the media on young minds. But when she spoke at Sunday's graduation ceremony, she talked of the theft of her rights and those of her classmates by the "heartbeat bill" signed into law by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott a week and a half before."I cannot give up this platform to promote complacency and peace when there is a war on my body and a war on my rights. A war on the rights of your mothers, a war on the rights of your sisters, a war on the rights of your daughters. We cannot stay silent," she told her class.The new law outlaws, without exception, any abortion after a first heartbeat can be detected. That could come as early as six weeks after conception when many women could be unaware that they are pregnant.The law also would allow anyone to sue a Texas abortion provider or anyone who helped someone get an abortion for as much as $10,000."I have dreams and hopes and ambition. Every girl graduating today does. We have spent our entire lives working towards our future, and without our input and without our consent, our control over that future has been stripped away from us. I am terrified that if my contraceptives fail, I am terrified that if I am raped, then my hopes and aspirations and dreams and efforts for my future will no longer matter. I hope that you can feel how gut-wrenching that is, I hope that you can feel how dehumanizing it is, to have the autonomy over your own body taken from you," she said.Video of her address was posted on social media and retweeted broadly. Comedian Sarah Silverman tweeted that the speech was "brave." Former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton tweeted: "This took guts. Thank you for not staying silent, Paxton."The Richardson Independent School District, of which Lake Highlands is part, said the district will review student speech protocols before next year's graduation ceremonies."The content of each student speaker's message is the private, voluntary expression of the individual student and does not reflect the endorsement, sponsorship, position or expression of the District or its employees," it said in a statement.

A high school senior class in Texas has a lot of multiples who are graduating, including three sets of triplets.Of the 664 students in the senior class at Memorial High School in Houston, there are also 18 pairs of twins.As for the triplets, some of them will be going their separate ways from one another for the first time to go to college."I'm going to miss these two," Alexander Garcia said of his brother and sister Nina and Seth."Everything I've experienced now, I've had them two to lean on," said Glenn Elie, of his siblings Lauren and Gaston. "But now, it's just me on my own."Watch the video above to learn more about this story.

OXFORD, Ohio — Starting Thursday night and running through the weekend, thousands of soon-to-be Miami University graduates will take part in limited-size commencement ceremonies outside at Yager Stadium.

They are the first graduating class in Miami’s history since the early 20th century to have attended a full school year – through a combination of in-person and remote online classes – during a global pandemic as the university made sweeping adjustments to remain open.

And the series of commencement services, created in reduced event sizes to adhere to coronavirus prevention protocols, includes many graduates from the spring of 2020 who lost their chances to celebrate graduation due to more strict pandemic guidelines during the first spring of the pandemic.

“These students have been triumphant in an unprecedented time filled with uncertainty and hardships,” said Jessica Rivinius, spokeswoman for Miami.

“Their strength and stick-to-itiveness, combined with their Miami education, fuels them to be true leaders as they embark on this next step,” she said. “We are so thrilled to be able to celebrate our graduates in person and offer a remote option for those unable to attend.”

Nearly 4,800 associate, undergraduate, master’s and doctorates will be awarded starting tonight through Sunday with the first ceremony at 7 p.m. for 2020 graduates who missed out last year.

For specific times and details on graduation ceremonies see the Miami website.

In total, Miami will host nine ceremonies in which Miami President Gregory Crawford will address the graduates and their guests in the stadium on the school’s main Oxford campus.

Ceremonies will also incorporate remarks from 2021 commencement speaker Dr. Carolyn Jefferson-Jenkins, the first woman of color elected as national president of the League of Women Voters.

To maintain social distancing and to meet capacity limits, each graduate is permitted to invite up to six guests to the ceremony, said school officials. Guests will have assigned seats in “pods” that are socially distanced from other attendees.

All participants, graduates, guests and staff will be required to wear face masks and maintain social distancing during the events.

The Journal-News is a media partner of WCPO 9 News.