Cheering Too Loudly Results In Charges Being Pressed Against Graduate’s Supporters
[guest post by Dana]
At Mississippi’s Senatobia High School graduation exercises last month and in attempt to ensure that all the graduates’ families could hear their loved one’s name being announced, Superintendent Jay Foster asked the audience to politely refrain from cheering and clapping until the end of the ceremony. After all, it was an event to recognize the graduates and their accomplishments:
Foster said one of the students who was walking across the stage during the disturbance actually flinched and looked upset when the cheering broke the silence.
“The look on her face when she was coming across the stage just reminded me, this is about the kids,” he said. “So many things these days, if I had to sum it up in a few words, it’s all about me. But this is not. This is about the graduates.”
When four people began to loudly cheer and scream for their graduate, they were asked to leave the ceremony. Because they disrupted the event, Foster also opted to press charges against the four adults:
“I did go and sign papers on them for disturbing the peace,” he said. “My point is not to have somebody have to pay money, but I want them to know there are consequences for their behavior, and I want us to have a dignified service.”
From Ursula Miller, one of the four charged:
“I can understand they can escort me out of the graduation, but to say they are going to put me in jail for it,” Miller said to WREG. “What else are they allowed to do?”
Foster explained his decision to press charges:
Foster said he didn’t think just removing them from the service would make the point. He said some of them were actually moving toward the door as they made noise. In addition, Foster said, it seemed as if they did it in defiance of the requests for respect as opposed to simply wanting to celebrate their graduates.
“I can never judge what’s in somebody’s heart. All I can act on is their actions,” he said. But that’s been said to me, that it looked like they did it on purpose.”
The four could face fines of up to $500 each and a sentence of up to six months in jail.
Ursula Miller is expected in court Tuesday.
–Dana
UPDATE BY PATTERICO: Not everything has to be a crime.
Hello.
Dana (86e864) — 6/4/2015 @ 5:59 pmthis is racist and weird, what they are doing on this family
if i were this racist and weird in my real life there would be unpleasant consequences
happyfeet (831175) — 6/4/2015 @ 6:04 pmThis is a job for the ACLU. Or FIRE.
nk (dbc370) — 6/4/2015 @ 6:08 pmOn a side note, when I googled this story, most results were variations on a generic “Family Arrested For Cheering Loudly At Graduation”. However, MSNBC, Raw Story, Daily Kos and a few other outlets that lean left, made a point to identify the family as “Black Family Arrested” or “Proud Black Family Arrested”.
Dana (86e864) — 6/4/2015 @ 6:11 pmI guess as long as you are African-American, you can behave in any manner you please, because -maybe- a distant relative was a slave. PUH-leese,courtesy and pride can go together, diginity is all they are missing.
pitchforkntorches (ef0337) — 6/4/2015 @ 6:16 pmAnd still they’ll vote Demoncrap.
Gazzer (f75968) — 6/4/2015 @ 6:36 pmWhat judge would sign the arrest warrant?
Michael Ejercito (d9a893) — 6/4/2015 @ 6:49 pmThis is way overkill, but in a way I sort of understand the sentiment. My graduating class wasn’t huge (240 of us), but nobody wanted (1) names of the graduates being read to be drowned out by loud cheers or (2) the ceremony dragging on for an additional 30 minutes (it was a hot June day) because the person reading the names has to pause and let the applause die down before moving on to the next one. Our families and friends were thus politely asked to hold applause until the very end. Still, we had a lot of cheering when names were read. And the problem is that it becomes almost a competition of sorts, so that if one kid gets 10 seconds of cheering from his family and friends the next kid’s family and friends think that they have to give their kid 12 seconds. A lot of it, admittedly, were students who were the first in their family to get a high school diploma, so it’s understandable that their families turned it into a huge deal. And our Principal would never have dreamt of having them removed from the ceremony, let alone arrested — he just glared at the families while they carried on.
JVW (8278a3) — 6/4/2015 @ 7:19 pmFirst-world problems are a b#tch, ain’t they? Still, an injustice is an injustice.
felipe (56556d) — 6/4/2015 @ 7:34 pmKind of like that scene in the movie Ragtime were the guy goes to a lawyer seeking a remedy for the vandalism of his car, and the lawyer tells him about real injustice. Of course it did not end well. An injustice is an injustice. “My ox has been gored!”
felipe (56556d) — 6/4/2015 @ 7:38 pmOf course I made a category mistake. Otherwise I got nuthin’.
felipe (56556d) — 6/4/2015 @ 7:41 pmThe very concept of public decorum has been destroyed. People act like animals all the time and have no concept of behaving as civilized members of a larger group.
Increasingly, I hate to attend events with large crowds, especially when I have to pay to attend, because people are so incredibly loud and obnoxious and inconsiderate it is often impossible to enjoy the event I paid to see.
The very concept of self-control is largely absent from a huge percent of the general population.
WarEagle82 (d35bad) — 6/4/2015 @ 7:56 pmDude, you live in Chicago. Racism and weirdness has nothing to do with it.
Actually, I’m with JVW. I get the point. 1) the parents should have noted the request and at least kept their enthusiasm down to a low roar until the reading was all over. Why is it so damn difficult for adults to act like adults when the situation warrants? 2) was it really necessary to sign affidavits against the 4 for disturbing the peace? I mean, FFS, this is a rather important ime in a kid’s life. Remove the so-called adults from the ceremony, yes. Arrest them? Does that really need to be done? You think the judge isn’t going to look at this and facepalm while he reduces or dismisses the charges?
BTW, I have you beat JVW. 240 in your graduating class? I had a mere 27. HA!
Bill H (2a858c) — 6/4/2015 @ 8:06 pmI’ve attended a graduation with the sort of “cheering” that the people in the story were expelled for. I can’t think of an onomatopoeic utterance that can do it justice, but it’s somewhere between banshee shrieking and ululation, accompanied with stomping the bleachers and clapping.
The mismatch between the behavior as described in the article, and what it’s like to experience it first hand, is something like when you hear that a high-schooler is in trouble for “suggestive dancing” and you pooh-pooh it and then you see what high-schoolers actually do nowadays at dances.
Gabriel Hanna (1073f5) — 6/4/2015 @ 8:12 pmI had a mere 27. HA!
Twenty-seven? Hell, I say let every kid get his or her own 20 second standing ovation when his or her name is read in that case. What’s an extra 9 minutes of graduation ceremony?
But imagine how awful it would be with a graduation class of 500.
JVW (8278a3) — 6/4/2015 @ 8:36 pmSenatobia High School, the school in this story, has a senior class of 116 students. That’s doesn’t seem like a lot of student names to read.
Dana (86e864) — 6/4/2015 @ 8:48 pmThe Principal or Superintendent should resign. Quickly.
JD (28ecb0) — 6/4/2015 @ 8:52 pmUPDATE BY PATTERICO: Not everything has to be a crime.
Patterico (3cc0c1) — 6/4/2015 @ 9:06 pmLow cost noise makers given out as favors for the festivities.
Cricket clickers.
papertiger (c2d6da) — 6/4/2015 @ 9:20 pmThis is an absolutely true story. When my son graduated from college last year a woman started shrieking when her daughter’s (I assume) name was announced. And when I say shrieking, I mean she was screaming at the top of her lungs as if being attacked. She also was waving a flag, but that’s not important.
In retrospect, I guess it was kind of funny because it was not brief. Another woman sitting next to her, which I assume was a family member, started hitting her with a program to make her stop. As you can guess, that made it worse. The shrieking became louder.
So, it took a few seconds for the poor graduate to walk across the stage and with every step the shrieks grew louder and the hits were harder and finally security started to walk over. And the poor graduate was looking over her shoulder knowing the whole time her family was causing the commotion.
Finally, after the graduate sat back down, security escorted the ladies out of the building.
I’m not judging, though. None of my business.
Ag80 (eb6ffa) — 6/4/2015 @ 9:24 pm“Act like you’ve been there before,” as the old saying goes.
JVW (8278a3) — 6/4/2015 @ 9:42 pmAt some point in the past celebratory gunfire. Just yelling like a fool was the compromise.
papertiger (c2d6da) — 6/4/2015 @ 9:43 pmHave they checked to see it it was a conspiracy to cheer? Did they use the phone or Internet to further this conspiracy? If so, they could be facing felony charges.
Kevin M (25bbee) — 6/4/2015 @ 10:06 pmyes it does!
redc1c4 (cf3b04) — 6/4/2015 @ 10:53 pmI know, redc1c4, Repent!
felipe (56556d) — 6/4/2015 @ 10:55 pmi am also amused that, 4 threads down, Dana is upset with people w*rking to silence speech, yet seems to be okay with the very same thing here…
😉
/white smoke
redc1c4 (cf3b04) — 6/4/2015 @ 10:56 pmA friend of mine wrote this regarding the matter. “I attended two of my kids graduation ceremonies this year and it grated on me when parents and family members would disrupt with shouting and yelling even after being asked not to. All these young people worked hard to be there and deserved to hear their names read and be recognized.” I fully agree. Blotting out these kids’ one moment of recognition for graduating highschool, many who may never get any such recognition again, is in very bad taste and there should be repercussions. They were warned and decided to me immature and defiant. Consequences be damned. Well, it’s time to pay for you bad choices because you ruined some other student’s moment of recognition that they and there family were looking forward to enjoying.
K9Ranger (93714c) — 6/4/2015 @ 11:31 pmYou would think that the grad ceremony would be short. You would be wrong. We were there in a muggy gymnasium (mid-May in northern Arkansas), with what seemed to be most of the town (about 1200 people), all of us dressed not only in our “Sunday best” but in our polyester gowns, various people droning on interminably.
Calling out 27 names? 15 minutes, tops. Everything else? The thick end of 4 hours.
Bill H (2a858c) — 6/5/2015 @ 1:28 amHillary – Can you take out another Foster?
mg (31009b) — 6/5/2015 @ 2:36 amWhen my daughters graduated from high school and college, I stood up and proudly applauded.
mg (31009b) — 6/5/2015 @ 2:39 amThe Fosterization of America, eff off.
Anyone notice team rino is set to blow obama on trade.
mg (31009b) — 6/5/2015 @ 3:02 amTeam all swallow. Pathetic
While on the face of it, it seems rather draconian, consider the alternative. The principal asks for quiet, and for the most part gets it, except a few. The principal pauses to allow all names to be heard. Then next year, there are a few more (because Latishwanda needs to get the most raucous acknowledgement, ever), and again the principal pauses so each name can be heard. But now the ceremony has ballooned by an extra hour, because the cheers have become louder and longer and more frequent. Now the majority speaks up, saying that the ceremonies are taking far too long, and animated school board meetings ensue. The principal is reprimanded for slowing down the ceremony so much. But the school board also re-iterates that no action can be taken against any unruly attendees, due to their low achievement and cultural sensitivity. So the next year the principal simply calls the names out, with no pausing. Parents start directly competing, since student A’s cheers have not died down before student B’s name is called. Student B’s family feels disrespected (who allowed that to become a verb?), and since there is no legal avenue for redress, how do you think that ceremony will end up? As countless basketball games have shown us, putting multiple competing groups in a closed space with insults added in is a recipe for violence. So eventually a school district that feels they can’t enforce any rules of decorum at graduation will simply start mailing diplomas out instead. And for those who think ejecting the offenders is enough, why reward bad behavior like that? After all, nobody really wants to sit there for all those other kids. Getting kicked out is a gift.
prowlerguy (3af7ff) — 6/5/2015 @ 6:03 amI suppose if the Principal had announced “If the people currently shrieking like they were being fed into a tree shredder do not stop, their child will be held back for summer school for a special class in civics” they’d sue.
C. S. P. Schofield (a196fd) — 6/5/2015 @ 6:19 amOver a Hundred thousand invested in my kids education- Well worth it
mg (31009b) — 6/5/2015 @ 6:25 amSeeing them use their education and prosper- Well worth it
Standing up and cheering like the yahoo I am, times two- Priceless.
Disobeying a school principal telling you to be quiet (or to take off all your clothes, lie down, and do everything the nice principal says) does not constitute criminal breach of the peace. I was serious about this being a case for the ACLU (not so serious about FIRE). This case involves mere speech and any law which is invoked to punish it will be subjected to strict scrutiny on its face and as applied.
nk (dbc370) — 6/5/2015 @ 6:27 amSo those who think this is “free speech”, answer this: If you pay $50 for you and your date to watch a movie, is it “free speech” when a group of people in your theater insist on talking loudly so that you are unable to hear and enjoy what you paid for?
The trouble is that the social compact and fabric used to be held together by a variety of enforcement mechanisms: Social shunning and shaming; localized, personalized violence administered with the knowledge and acceptance of society, and the law. The first two have been stripped away by those who seek to normalize all aberrant behavior and seek to prevent any negative consequence for those actions. If the third and final avenue for redress is blocked for the vast majority who prefer the social compact, then the only outlet for the stresses being placed on that fabric will become generalized violence of the larger group on the smaller one.
prowlerguy (3af7ff) — 6/5/2015 @ 8:11 amGreetings:
I see an undercurrent in this incident that has disturbed me a bit for a while. I call it “misbehavior as contract”. The perpetrator ignores the call to proper behavior and makes a “one-sided” contract that the enforcer is disallowed from doing anything other than what the perpetrator has decided is an acceptable response.
Thus we have these supporters of a graduate ignoring the call of the school’s administrators calculating that they will do what they will, that is, interrupt the public ceremony, and yet they should suffer no disruption other than being justly removed from the ceremony. You see, they have this “morality-based” one-sided contract that should prevent otherwise.
At the risk of expanding the argument some, I live in the San Francisco Bay area and since the turn of the century, I have observed a similar situation in regard to many “political demonstrations” which I have concluded are not so much but rather “civic disruptions”. The participants inflict their misbehaviors on the local geography with a reinforced expectation that any legal sanction applied will me “de minimus” if you don’t mind a bit of early morning Latin. So, those other citizens who would like the freedom to travel about or pursue their own commerce are infringed upon by a determined “morally superior” minority who knowingly prevent such.
So, forgive my former altar-boy self if I can neither genuflect before nor breast-beat over this pseudo-legal-atrocity. I think that the “shock” of the school’s administration failure to accept the “one-sided” contract inflicted upon their ceremony is a good corrective. And while it can’t put the disruptive toothpaste back in its tube, it may “encourager les autres” at future ceremonies to mind their manners and behave like the adults they appear to be biologically. While I’m no great fan of “the process is the punishment”, it can sometimes, like the proverbial broken clock, serve a useful purpose.
And burdened as I am with a Catholic educated mind, I wouldn’t mind it a bit if some of the other attendees of the ceremony dragged the disruptors into small claims court to establish a dollar-value for such behavior.
11B40 (6abb5c) — 6/5/2015 @ 8:20 amI’ve got a simple, effective idea for all those who like to stomp and shriek like a red-assed baboon on crack. Just tell their behavior will be noted on their permanent school record. Watch the smile melt from their face almost instantaneously.
Bill H (2a858c) — 6/5/2015 @ 9:27 amHAs anybody asked the kid (or kids) how they feel about it? Are they mortified by their folks, as is right and proper?
C. S. P. Schofield (a196fd) — 6/5/2015 @ 9:33 amI like the concept, but the only fly-in-the-ointment here is you have to establish a harm or an injury resulting from that harm. Tough to do when you can’t prove you lost $X simply because some yahoo just could not keep their retarded idiocy in check for a couple of hours.
Bill H (2a858c) — 6/5/2015 @ 9:40 amI don’t know how this graduation ceremony in Mississippi worked, but where I grew up the proper response might be this: if you disrupt the ceremony to cheer for your child you are immediately escorted out of the building. Sure, you have already seen the graduation of your kid, but you would not be allowed to attend the post-graduation reception. You are also subject to being barred from any future school functions, so you could potentially miss out on your younger kid’s games and even their graduation ceremony. I think that’s a lot more reasonable than bringing criminal charges.
JVW (8278a3) — 6/5/2015 @ 9:53 am@38 Bill: How is a note on a permanent school record going to affect an adult? Ursula Miller, the person quoted in the article as being charged, is 45 years old.
Joshua (9ede0e) — 6/5/2015 @ 10:27 am@36 Prowlerguy: If somebody is talking during a movie, it’s reasonable to have them sent out of the theater, but that doesn’t mean that they need to have criminal charges filed against them.
Joshua (9ede0e) — 6/5/2015 @ 10:30 amIt was a joke, Joshua. I guess it’s only those of us old enough to remember that vague, empty threat who will get it.
Bill H (2a858c) — 6/5/2015 @ 11:18 am@42 Joshua: First, my response was to those invoking “freedom of speech”. If they were exercising a right, then even ejection from the building would be an infringement, right? But to your point, what if the unruly parents continued to whoop and holler, even after being told to leave, and the noise only stopped when they are forced to exit the building, as with this case?
Further, if your movie is disrupted, there is an easy remedy that makes you whole: you can watch the movie again for free. What remedy is available to the parent and students whose names were drowned out by a bunch of animals who think the whole world revolves around them?
prowlerguy (3af7ff) — 6/5/2015 @ 11:44 amAs an educator of students who are less than enthusiastic about coming to school in general, which is why they end up at my school, our graduation ceremonies go off quietly in the main because, A) Some disruptions are going to happen, and going with them makes it smoother. B) Families graduate more than one child. If you screw up a graduation for kid 1, you get banned from coming to child 2 through 5’s ceremony.
Takes about one family every five or six years to make the point. Last year, we lowered the banhammer on someone who brought the airhorn into the building. Nice thing about it happening at graduation though, is we have TONS of video evidence that’s really hard to fight. “OH that’s not you cheering your kid on camera? That isn’t your hand holding the airhorn?”
MrScience_ (cd3d49) — 6/5/2015 @ 12:57 pmThis is an example of the “Give a Mouse a Cookie” Syndrome in which we’ve vested too much authority in Public Schools to regulate speech that has “an effect” on campus. School Administrators no longer know there are any boundaries. It’s more than offensive, it’s dangerous. We’re raising a generation to think that it’s perfectly acceptable for an unfettered executive to stifle their speech. We’ve come a long way from Mary Beth Tinker … Sadly. Quash Qualified Immunity for these school administrators who think that their interpretation of speech is all that matters and that their mission to run a school (or district) outweighs all others rights or privileges.
Lorem Ipsum (cee048) — 6/5/2015 @ 1:55 pmBefore you get too incensed about how the school treated these noise makers. I suggest you go to a modern graduation. If you have any hearing left at the end of the event, you will have brought your own hearing protection. There is no way to hear any of the ceremony over the shrieking, no matter how close the the stage you sit.
Jerry Russell (b26195) — 6/5/2015 @ 3:46 pmWell, none of the “free speech” folks like Lorem seem to be able to answer a simple question, already posed. What is your solution? If your solution is to let anyone do anything, I have to assume you are fine with another parent putting their fist into the flapping maw of these animals. Because whether you like it or not, EVERYONE in that auditorium has rights, not just the rude, inconsiderate ones. It has been said that your right to swing your fist ends at my nose. I would change that to say that your right to cheer your child ends when my child’s name is called. And if you are unwilling to impose even the most basic rules of decorum on EVERYONE in attendance, and if you can’t accept the inevitable violence that will ensue when enough people see the lack of consequences, then you must be OK with simply outlawing graduation ceremonies altogether, and the new graduates simply get an emailed PDF file to show for their hard work.
Make no mistake about it, yelling and shrieking like baboons and using airhorns is not speech of any kind. It is meant to demean and marginalize everyone else in the auditorium except their special little snowflake.
prowlerguy (3af7ff) — 6/5/2015 @ 8:26 pmWe don’t need a solution, because we don’t see a problem. Now go chase those pesky kids off your lawn and don’t forget to take your Milk of Magnesia.
nk (dbc370) — 6/5/2015 @ 8:49 pmGood to know, nk. Screw everybody else, nk feels the need to express themselves, and nobody else can object, or else they are racists or sexists or some other kind of icky -ist. And if a few bones are broken because someone takes offense to the animals and sees that nobody in authority will deal with the problem and proceeds to beat the animals down, then so be it. I see you’re also a big fan of Ferguson and Baltimore people “expressing themselves”. No surprise there.
I prefer a world where people don’t have to resort to violence simply to live their lives without others taking from them. I prefer a nation of laws and a government that fairly enforces those laws. If that makes me “old”, then so be it. At least I’m not a self-absorbed hipster.
prowlerguy (3af7ff) — 6/6/2015 @ 9:38 amomg dude you need fiber
happyfeet (831175) — 6/6/2015 @ 9:46 ami have this steel-cut oatmeal i make and dude it has changed my whole life
happyfeet (831175) — 6/6/2015 @ 9:46 amok you need a rice cooker first off
happyfeet (831175) — 6/6/2015 @ 9:46 am2 cups steel cut oatmeal (not the slow cook crap)
7 cups water
a healthy splatch of sriracha
go heavy on the garlic powder (oatmeal just absorbs the bejesus out of spices)
then I add a packet of whatever white wine marinade seasoning I found on sale – the key thing is the packet has “wine” in the name
um..
ok yeah me I go pretty heavy on the cayenne – you need *some* but cayenne is a very personal decision
then I add two heaping tablespoons of osem chicken consomme – it is of the jews so you know it’s good for you (this stuff is magical btw)
then i add at least 2 tbspns of butter – a big healthy hunk
then I add a fist-full of store-brand frozen three-pepper blend, and maybe some cabbage slaw and/or grated carrot if I have it handy – you can sneak quite a bit of vegetable stuff in here, but you don’t have to – sometimes i skip the vegetables
then I add two scoops of honey powder (love love love having honey powder handy – usually get it from them prepper places)
a couple pinches of salt
then just set your cooker on the brown rice setting, and when it’s done stir stir stir
goes fabulously with roast chicken and you won’t get blocked up
happyfeet (831175) — 6/6/2015 @ 9:55 amoops oops opps
i mean not the FAST cook crap – you DO want the slow cook stuff – you’re making so much that you’ll be reheating, which means re-cooking, and the fast cook stuff turns to glop
happyfeet (831175) — 6/6/2015 @ 9:56 am*oops* i mean not opps
how very silly
happyfeet (831175) — 6/6/2015 @ 9:56 ammake that two tbspns of honey powder – not the scoop – you want the sweet for balance not to make the oatmeal actually sweet to the taste
happyfeet (831175) — 6/6/2015 @ 10:02 amIt would be much better if you could take a minute and marshal all those random thoughts bouncing around in your drug-addled brain and put together a cogent response. Or less “oatmeal” in the bong. Either one.
prowlerguy (3af7ff) — 6/6/2015 @ 10:28 amIf Condoleeza Rice were speaking, and they heckled, they would never be charged. Why is protest speech legal, but approval speech not?
Kevin M (25bbee) — 6/6/2015 @ 10:45 amyou think it would be better but you’re wrong
happyfeet (831175) — 6/6/2015 @ 10:57 amRun along happyfeet. There’s a police officer somewhere that needs your condemnation. Get to it.
prowlerguy (3af7ff) — 6/6/2015 @ 11:02 amI think Jerry Russell and prowlerguy have valid points. The reports I’ve read said the adults knew the rules and some even walked out as they yelled and screamed, suggesting they didn’t care about other graduates or that they knew the penalty for this conduct was being ejected. In addition, the noise made by these adults meant other parents couldn’t hear their children’s names called, so they probably weren’t able to get audio of their graduation. That significantly undercuts the value of the ceremony for them.
I don’t know if the answer is criminal charges but when adults know they are violating the rules and don’t care, what other option is there?
DRJ (e80d46) — 6/6/2015 @ 11:09 amok fine but i’m a go get that popo
happyfeet (831175) — 6/6/2015 @ 11:11 am#61 hf
steveg (fed1c9) — 6/6/2015 @ 11:30 amI think this comes from a famous art critic. “Anyone who sees and paints a sky green and fields blue ought to be sterilized.”
So try to learn to paint between the lines and use only the permitted colors OK?
Please limit your response to a simple “yes sir” so I don’t get confused navigating through all those puzzling consonants and vowels you use
i’m not very good at arts and crafts at all I take after my mama like that
happyfeet (831175) — 6/6/2015 @ 11:36 amMaybe they should study how the NFL handles draft day?
steveg (fed1c9) — 6/6/2015 @ 11:56 amPerhaps this is another, “I guess you had to be there.” In general one would think criminal charges would be overkill, but maybe there were aggravating, rather than mitigating, surrounding circumstances.
MD in Philly (f9371b) — 6/6/2015 @ 12:09 pmJust for you, steveg
“The grass is blue and the sky is green, where the devil am I?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNabSidq2XU
heard this once while driving cross country, loved it.
MD in Philly (f9371b) — 6/6/2015 @ 12:15 pmThe NFL Draft involves approximately 250 picks spread out over 3 days. Not many people would attend a graduation ceremony like that.
DRJ (e80d46) — 6/6/2015 @ 12:21 pmExactly
One ceremony for the dignified and another option B ceremony for people like Sarah Palin’s neighbors up in the Mat-Su valley.
Let them blast out a cut of their theme song, the family can go nuts and their kid can head off to Delta JC for an AA in remedial studies or to Harvard.
It’ll either turn into something real fun, or be a Fireball fueled drunken disaster. Give them freedom and a venue where they can either turn it into the best graduation ever, or watch it devolve into nonsense
I think if you let everyone go buck wild they’ll fail spectactularly… their graduation will turn into the Jerry Springer Show.
Then it’ll be over. We need to let people have the freedom to fail.
Also when I’m really old I can binge watch “America’s Worst Graduations 1-24” and see someones 350lbs 47y/o grandmother twerking her way across the stage with her grandson. In another episode there will be shots fired. Oh yes.
steveg (fed1c9) — 6/6/2015 @ 5:27 pmmaybe graduation ceremonies are stupid and gay ever think of that
happyfeet (831175) — 6/6/2015 @ 5:29 pmoh dear
this is the senatobia high school mascot
**trigger warning**
it’s very dehumanizing like when you say hey elizabeth warren why you have so much wampum
happyfeet (831175) — 6/6/2015 @ 5:56 pmRelax, happyfeet,
White Sycamore is their mascot:
Dana (86e864) — 6/6/2015 @ 6:13 pmoh my goodness
we need to check that tree’s privilege
i don’t see how we move forward from here
happyfeet (831175) — 6/6/2015 @ 6:21 pmWhile other people certainly have the right to cheer for their graduate, they don’t have a right to drown out my graduate’s moment in the spotlight. They knew the rules, they freely chose to ignore them, and worse, continued as they were being escorted away. That is not freedom to cheer (v. freedom to protest). That’s just bad manners and ignorance demanding attention. Should it be a crime? Probably not. But as someone above asked, and still no one who thinks their actions were acceptable has answered, what would be a solution to prevent this from happening in the future?
The point is, why should 4 people be allowed to control and dominate a milestone moment in the lives of other families in attendance? I don’t think they should be. Why is important that they be allowed to be rude and obnoxious more important than others’ to be able to hear their graduate’s name called out and revel in their graduate’s accomplishment without it being highjacked?
Dana (86e864) — 6/6/2015 @ 6:22 pmno srsly maybe the whole calling-everybody’s-name thing is goofy passe and ridiculously time-consuming
happyfeet (831175) — 6/6/2015 @ 6:31 pmfor the love of pete it’s a public high school
it’s not like you ran a half marathon or anything
happyfeet (831175) — 6/6/2015 @ 6:32 pmI blame Eve. If not for her, we would be living in a perfect world. Now, we have to do our time in an imperfect one and depend on God’s Grace to return to Eden.
nk (dbc370) — 6/6/2015 @ 7:51 pmsavin up sum special smax for eve
happyfeet (831175) — 6/6/2015 @ 8:01 pm“The Blackboard Jungle” was written in 1954, by a schoolteacher*. The movie with Glen Ford is better known. Nothing’s changed.
*Evan Hunter, who also wrote cop stories under the name Ed McBain. His short story “On the Sidewalk Bleeding” http://theliterarylink.com/sidewalk.html was published in 1956, and it was assigned 7th grade reading in my daughter’s school this past year. The only thing that has changed in that regard is that the gangs are better armed.
nk (dbc370) — 6/6/2015 @ 8:21 pma friend who taught me right from wrong and weak from strong
that’s a lot to learn
happyfeet (831175) — 6/6/2015 @ 9:08 pmA co-worker who has a friend where the ceremony took place told me this morning that the charges didn’t stem from the disruptive cheering, the charges stemmed from the loud streams of profanity that accompanied the ejection. Third-hand story at best, I don’t know what the truth is other than there seems to be more to the story than what first makes the news.
Where I live, the graduation ceremony is outdoors, so people bring industrial-strength air horns, and they absolutely do not care what the impact is to the people of all ages sitting around them. Nothing says happy graduation to the two or three graduates following their child like the after-effects of a 110-dB air horn. Watching the kids around the miscreants flinch when the horns go off and parents having to carry out wailing infants is a special bonus, too.
Advo (939bc8) — 6/8/2015 @ 9:48 amTime and manner. It’s well established that government may regulate the time and manner of expression, so long as it does so in a way that is content-neutral or at least viewpoint-netural (depending on the kind of forum). For instance, you are free to express your opinion on any subject, on any public street; but not at 3 in the morning using a megaphone. That’s especially so in this case, since the opinion being suppressed here is not one the government disapproves of; on the contrary, the government very much approves of the opinion and its expression, but merely objects to the time and manner in which it’s being expressed. This circumtance itself will tend to lower the scrutiny bar, since it stands to reason that the restriction is not being used as a pretext for censorship.
Milhouse (a0cc5c) — 6/8/2015 @ 10:29 amShould profanity be criminal? Current doctrine seems to say it’s not protected by the first amendment, but I wonder about that.
Milhouse (a0cc5c) — 6/8/2015 @ 10:57 am