YOUR REGION – School administration from a local high school are still reeling after their carefully planned senior commencement was effectively ruined by a group of grade 12 hat-tossing rebels.
According to witnesses, the ceremony, which had been going off without a hitch suddenly turned into absolute chaos with five minutes to spare after the class of 2014 suddenly rose to their feet and defiantly flung off their school-issued graduation caps.
“I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, after all the work we put in for this to happen,” explained school principal Don Johnson shaking his head with disappointment. “Months of preparation, fundraising, rehearsals . . . it all went down the drain in an instant because of these hooligans.”
Johnson said that they warned the students at the start of the year about any hijinx and that up until then, they were reasonably incident free.
“We had a few scares early in the year with some jokesters who wore ‘GRAD 14’ t-shirts to school but they were promptly dealt with,” Johnson said. “This was our big event though, commencement was supposed to be a serious, straightforward affair.”
Johnson wasn’t the only one who was appalled by the students’ behaviour; members of the school’s Parent Advisory Committee felt similarly slighted.
“We spent a lot of money on those hats and for them to just toss them into the air without any regard was clearly an act of transgression,” PAC president Cindy Lee told The Peak. “We spent hours making sure the tassels were on all straight and on the right side, and then as soon as we say ‘you’ve graduated’, they just toss em’ off without any respect.”
“There was significant damage to plenty of hats, some were lost and others were beyond repair,” Lee said, heartbroken. “We gave them these caps as a gift for all their hard work over the past 13 years, we expected them to wear them for the rest of their lives, but now that’s not going to happen.”
While it remains unknown who was behind the stunt, parents and administration say that all those responsible will be severely punished.
“Oh, there’s no way that they’re getting away scot-free from this one, they need to grow up and learn that this isn’t acceptable behaviour in the adult world,” principal Johnson said of the matter.
“I know they were probably making some sort of point about how high university tuition is or giving a snarky hats off to our provincial unemployment rates, but that just wasn’t the place or time for it.”
While students have mostly stayed silent about the incident, when asked some have responded with either a confused face or a befuddled hand gesture.
“Do you think this kind of thing goes on at other schools? You think they would allow this kind of hat-tossery somewhere like Harvard?” Johnson asked, saying he had never actually researched it but assumed there could be no way. “I have never seen such blatant disrespect in my life and it’s really got me scared for the future.”
“Hopefully none of them become construction workers or anything,” he concluded borrowing a line from his commencement speech. “Can you imagine? First day on the job and they just all toss off their construction hats . . . they need to be taught a lesson otherwise that’s the direction our youth are headed, completely and utterly prone to head-injury.”
