South Aiken graduates overcome barriers to form distinct versions of success (2024)

Editor's Note: This story has been updated to correct that Cam Nuessle, the chairman of the Aiken County Board of Education, was a featured speaker.

South Aiken High School honored its class of 2024 Thursday at the USC Aiken Convocation center.

Aiken County Board of Education Chairman Cam Nuessle said in his speech he couldn’t resist lecturing the entire South Aiken senior class like he often does to his kids.

Traxler slammed an overflowing five-inch binder on the podium.

“Chapter one: dental hygiene,” Nuessle joked.

Nuessle focused on students achieving greatness, which is surpassing what the graduates and others believe their potential to be, he said.

“If we push you, it’s not because we want you to be like us,” he said. “It’s because we want you to be better than us.”

Valedictorian Anna Karius, who will attend Duke University in the fall, reminisced about her classmates asking “why are we learning this?”

That remark is often interpreted as dismissive of education standards, curriculum or teachers, but Karius said it is a sign of curiosity, a key element in finding success.

“We may not use the math we learned in pre-calculus, or the foreign language we’ve already forgotten, but I want to remind you this is not all there is to take from high school,” Karius said. “These past four years taught us how to learn, collaborate, fail and succeed. They taught us how to think critically and inspire change.”

Graduation isn’t just a culmination of every accomplishment in high school that Karius described. For others, it closes a chapter on spending time with a “family.”

Theo Gutiarrasts, who will attend USC Aiken in the fall, moved to Aiken from Sao Paulo, Brazil when he was 16.

He made friends in his English Second Language class where he learned a lot of Spanish from his friends and English from his teachers.

“I didn’t expect to move here, but it was an amazing adventure,” Gutiarrasts said. “It was weird moving to a new country, but it created a family, especially my class.”

South Aiken graduates and their families left the convocation center around 9 p.m., calling each other to reunite at the entrance.