Ignorance at its finest. Warrants issued for cheering at graduation

[NoStateofMind]

Link

SENATOBIA, Miss. — “My 18-year-old daughter, Lanarcia Walker, graduated from Senatobia High,” Linda Walker said.

The pomp and circumstance did not last long for some Mississippi families.

“He said ‘you did it baby’, waived his towel and went out the door,” Walker explained.

“When she went across the stage I just called her name out. ‘Lakaydra’. Just like that,” Ursula Miller said she shouted about her niece.

Miller and Henry Walker were two of the four people asked to leave Senatobia High School’s graduation ceremony for cheering.

Police at Northwest Mississippi Community College, where the high school ceremony was held, said the superintendent asked the crowd not to scream and to hold their applause until the end.

Otherwise, they would be asked to leave.

However, that wasn’t the end of it.

“A week or two later, I was served with some papers,” Miller explained.

The papers threatened to throw them in jail.

Senatobia Municipal School District Superintendent Jay Foster filed ‘disturbing the peace’ charges against the people who yelled at graduation.

Officers issued warrants for their arrests with a possible $500 bond.

This is insane and overboard. People who file frivolous charges like this should have repercussion's for their actions but we all know there won't be. The most that will happen will be that the charges get dropped and it goes away due to media attention. The sad thing is, why does it TAKE media attention for people in 'positions of power' to act like a normal fucking human beings?

 

[Londo_Jowo]

Discussed weeks ago.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2433736

Obviously you have no children who have worked the majority of their lives to graduate only to have their name go unheard due to overzealous attendees drowning out the loud speakers.

 

[NoStateofMind]

Discussed weeks ago.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2433736

Obviously you have no children who have worked the majority of their lives to graduate only to have their name go unheard due to overzealous attendees drowning out the loud speakers.

Tells you how much I frequent this forum.

Doesn't explain the shout of someones name and walking out. thats just silliness

 

[cKGunslinger]

Yeah, there were air-horns and whistles and beach-balls thrown at my daughter's small-school (238 graduates) graduation last week. Never out of hand, but still annoying.

 

[Londo_Jowo]

Yet 39 years ago when I graduated people had the common decency to wait until the end of the ceremony before cheering/using air horns.

 

[Mai72]

Yet 39 years ago when I graduated people had the common decency to wait until the end of the ceremony before cheering/using air horns.

39 years ago people were much more considerate. It's a much different atmosphere today.

 

[Darwin333]

Yet 39 years ago when I graduated people had the common decency to wait until the end of the ceremony before cheering/using air horns.

Regardless of common decency, do you really think that arrest warrants should have been issued weeks later??? It's not like they were arrested at the scene.

 

[Zodiark1593]

Regardless of common decency, do you really think that arrest warrants should have been issued weeks later??? It's not like they were arrested at the scene.

Perhaps, if there's an effective alternative.

 

[KK]

Regardless of common decency, do you really think that arrest warrants should have been issued weeks later??? It's not like they were arrested at the scene.

Whoever pursued arrest warrants for these folks need to be eliminated.

 

[tweaker2]

Both my kids graduated from the same private school five years apart. During the first graduation I attended, just before the ceremony was to begin, a school administrator took the stage and told the audience to refrain from shouting and clapping and to remain silent until all names were called. Picture taking was allowed but no flash photography, all cell phones off and everyone to remain in their seats during the ceremony, the usual exceptions allowed ie -need to relieve oneself, family or medical emergency, etc.

Well, it didn't take long into the ceremony that the shouting of names started, the hooting and screaming, the flash photography. Ushers were sent to calm the hot spots down, but not much more was done to keep the ceremony orderly. No punitive actions taken like ejections, etc.

Flash forward five years:

During the grad ceremony for my youngest, the same warning speech was delivered along with an added warning that disturbing the ceremony would result in the miscreant(s) being led out the door.

Despite the warning, some folks in the crowd decided to test the limits of said warning and were immediately led out as promised. Still others did same even though they witnessed how the previous "violaters" were promptly yet respectfully led out the doors.

This happened at least a half dozen times during the ceremony.

I agree that having the folks disturbing the ceremony get arrested, prosecuted and fined is excessive. However, I agree to policy having those disturbers permanently banned from the school campus and all future ceremonies as well as having the student's receipt of diploma delayed from six months up to a year, administered under a stern case by case review process. This policy is now in place at the school.

I feel this way because those folks who blatantly disturb the ceremony despite being told not to is setting an example for the graduates that violating rules is acceptable behavior and the risk for penalty is worth the effort, despite embarrassing and penalizing the student they came to honor. This, along with the idea that being selfish, self centered and arrogant via irritating and angering the many other attendees who do respect the rules is A-OK with the violater, is no big deal and not the problem of the perpetrator but a problem that must be tolerated by those others that abide by the rules.

 

[DrPizza]

Both my kids graduated from the same private school five years apart. During the first graduation I attended, just before the ceremony was to begin, a school administrator took the stage and told the audience to refrain from shouting and clapping and to remain silent until all names were called. Picture taking was allowed but no flash photography, all cell phones off and everyone to remain in their seats during the ceremony, the usual exceptions allowed ie -need to relieve oneself, family or medical emergency, etc.

Well, it didn't take long into the ceremony that the shouting of names started, the hooting and screaming, the flash photography. Ushers were sent to calm the hot spots down, but not much more was done to keep the ceremony orderly. No punitive actions taken like ejections, etc.

Flash forward five years:

During the grad ceremony for my youngest, the same warning speech was delivered along with an added warning that disturbing the ceremony would result in the miscreant(s) being led out the door.

Despite the warning, some folks in the crowd decided to test the limits of said warning and were immediately led out as promised. Still others did same even though they witnessed how the previous "violaters" were promptly yet respectfully led out the doors.

This happened at least a half dozen times during the ceremony.

I agree that having the folks disturbing the ceremony get arrested, prosecuted and fined is excessive. However, I agree to policy having those disturbers permanently banned from the school campus and all future ceremonies as well as having the student's receipt of diploma delayed from six months up to a year, administered under a stern case by case review process. This policy is now in place at the school.

I feel this way because those folks who blatantly disturb the ceremony despite being told not to is setting an example for the graduates that violating rules is acceptable behavior and the risk for penalty is worth the effort, despite embarrassing and penalizing the student they came to honor. This, along with the idea that being selfish, self centered and arrogant via irritating and angering the many other attendees who do respect the rules is A-OK with the violater, is no big deal and not the problem of the perpetrator but a problem that must be tolerated by those others that abide by the rules.

1. 20 years ago, these miscreants - the parents - didn't graduate. All you seem to need to do these days to get a diploma is show up. You don't have to work hard for a high school diploma.

2. Unless my recollection is incorrect, there's already been case law - you cannot withhold a diploma for a lot of the things schools used to get away with withholding it for. If the student earned it, they get it.

 

[Cozarkian]

We need a punishment in between. Arrest is too severe and kicking them out after they already saw their kid on stage is probably a reward to them.

 

[tweaker2]

1. 20 years ago, these miscreants - the parents - didn't graduate. All you seem to need to do these days to get a diploma is show up. You don't have to work hard for a high school diploma.

2. Unless my recollection is incorrect, there's already been case law - you cannot withhold a diploma for a lot of the things schools used to get away with withholding it for. If the student earned it, they get it.

I think it's a technical issue at the school my kids graduated from. The affected students are acknowledged as being graduated, their records show their being graduated, the student receives a substitute form letter acknowledging as such but the official mounted and embossed document itself is withheld.

 

[1prophet]

39 years ago people were much more considerate. It's a much different atmosphere today.

And instead of going back and researching why this was so and what is needed to bring it back, we continually pass laws one more draconian then the next along with brute enforcement in order to save us from ourselves.

 

[MagickMan]

1. Don't take airhorns and/or cowbells to high school events (even football games).
2. Act like you go out in public more than once a year.
3. Try to remember that it's not only your kid walking up to get their diploma.

Remember those 3 things and you'll be okay at the next graduation.

 

[JimKiler]

1. 20 years ago, these miscreants - the parents - didn't graduate. All you seem to need to do these days to get a diploma is show up. You don't have to work hard for a high school diploma.

2. Unless my recollection is incorrect, there's already been case law - you cannot withhold a diploma for a lot of the things schools used to get away with withholding it for. If the student earned it, they get it.

It happened 20 years ago at my graduation and my sisters graduation 24 years ago. We both had graduating classes of 400+.

 

[cabri]

Do not punish the kids by withholding the graduation.
Allow polite clapping; yelling or additional noise generators are forbidden.
The first time noise; stop and make announcement that such will not be tolerated. If it happens again; the graduation will be suspended.
But clear the audience out.

Second time the noise:
Cancel the ceremony - Later, just hand the kids their paperwork.

The message will get out quickly.

The graduation ceremony is a privileged, not a right. Accept is as so.

 

[dphantom]

It happened 20 years ago at my graduation and my sisters graduation 24 years ago. We both had graduating classes of 400+.

AH! So you started the trend.

 

[Ackmed]

Do not punish the kids by withholding the graduation.
Allow polite clapping; yelling or additional noise generators are forbidden.
The first time noise; stop and make announcement that such will not be tolerated. If it happens again; the graduation will be suspended.
But clear the audience out.

Second time the noise:
Cancel the ceremony - Later, just hand the kids their paperwork.

The message will get out quickly.

The graduation ceremony is a privileged, not a right. Accept is as so.

I like this answer.


Those parents acted like assholes, they knew better. Yet they did not care about anyone else but themselves. Canceling the ceremony would get the message out. Sure it would suck for other students and their parents, but they would have their peers to blame.

 

[dphantom]

I like this answer.


Those parents acted like assholes, they knew better. Yet they did not care about anyone else but themselves. Canceling the ceremony would get the message out. Sure it would suck for other students and their parents, but they would have their peers to blame.

I do too. These parents appear to have been no more then self centered brats who cared nothing for simple common courtesy and respect for others. They were too self absorbed in themselves to care how their actions would affect others.

 

[Linux23]

Whoever pursued arrest warrants for these folks need to be eliminated.

^^^

pretty much this

 

[werepossum]

Personally, I would have prefered not to have the ceremony - just one more day out of my life, one more mandatory expense I'll never use twice. (Although I totally had the legs to carry off the little black gown, it just clashed with the red in my beard.) I think though that in some neighborhoods, a girl graduating high school IS a big deal. People are saying that her parents and relatives never graduated - what if that is true? Are they not right to be jubilant at her accomplishment, even if some of us find it trivial or impolite to acknowledge? It obviously isn't trivial or impolite to them.

I put this in the same category as draconian prohibitions against mentioning G-d. I never wanted the ceremony, but if I'm going to be there, then I have zero problems with people dragging it out to celebrate their child. I do have a problem with the educational administration and cops (both of whom continually insist they are chronically underfunded) spending taxpayer dollars on this.

If the biggest problem I have is spending an extra hour at a graduation ceremony because people clapped and hollered for their children, it's been a pretty damned good day. And if society has granted you a measure of power, pray for discretion and good judgment in using it.