Honor student's diploma withheld because crowd cheers for her

And they're lawyered up...

http://www.hoinews.com/news/news_story.aspx?id=37467

 

Markvid's post is exactly what I'm talking about.

Not to defend school administrators _ who often come across like the principals in Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller's Day Off _ but they can't win. Let's say they allow a whole lot of noise and air horns and graduation is a pep rally ... so a parent whose graduate's name couldn't be heard because of all the cheering for the previous graduate decides to sue because their graduate was denied his 10 seconds of solitary glory.

And as it's been pointed out ... all this fuss is over a basically useless piece of paper. If you've graduated, it's the transcript that's important. Your diploma is merely ceremonial. Maybe the parents who are planning to sue don't understand that.

 

I think cheering is fine but it should be over with when they are handed the diploma. I think it sucks that parents can't clap or cheer for their honors student.

I also think holding the actual diploma and trying to say they have to earn it back is bullshit. If anyone should have to do anything to get it back it should be the family who took the cheering too far. If the administrators want to claim they can't pinpoint the individuals then what makes them think it was the family. (Ok so it was but that's not the point)

 

I'm a bit split on this. Yes, on the surface, this seems like an incredibly petty unreasonable over the top power trip. BUT, a couple years ago I attended a HS graduation that was nearly ruined by the screaming, almost like each student's family thought they had to prove they loved their kid more by screaming louder and longer than the previous screaming family, meanwhile other non-screaming families were getting pissed because they never got to hear their kid's name called because the previous kid's family was still screaming. It got ridiculous.

I think withholding the diploma is a really dumb and cruel way of handling this, but from what I've seen, this has evolved into a legitimate problem that needs to be addressed in some strong manner.

 

Bottom line, parents of high school kids suck.

This is the equivalent of a the soccer mom or swimming dad who calls up and bitches about the fact you don't cover the swim team even though they work just as hard as the football team. Every kid is special but my kid is more special than anybody else's. Fuck that.

 

I never understood the big deal about graduating from high school, much less whether it warrants whooping and hollering of any kind.

 

Fixed.

 

I'll go with that. What a waste of time.

 

I agree that the parents are absolute morons for not piping down. But the thought that the kid should be punished for what people 100 feet away from her are doing is fucking asinine. The parents/family should have been kicked out of the ceremony. That way, they learn the lesson for their actions. What lesson is being taught here, don't bring your family to graduation?

 

Those who can, do ... Those who can't, teach ... and those who can't teach, get promoted to principals, athletic directors and other administration jobs.

 

On the other side of this argument, I have never been so embarrassed of the small, rural community that I call home as I was about two weeks ago when my younger brother graduated. Whooping, hollering, yelling, screaming, air horns, song-singing ... and that was just when they were walking in. My entire family. My ENTIRE immediate family. To the tune of about 25 aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews had to witness that shit, while I stood in the back holding my head in my hands.

I've never seen anything like it. I wish those folks had been made to sign a contract. Absolutely.

 

Another reminder of my high school graduation came to me. The row in front of me had a coupld of football players, including the captain of the team. As the captain's name was called, a few of the football players booed him as kind of a joke. While I wasn't a big fan of the guy, I felt kind of bad (no I didn't take part). When he came back he was pissed off and was cursing at his (maybe now former) buddies.

If you have in place a policy that removes the cheers, it also removes the jeers. And in the case of this family, they seemed to be the only ones to disregard the "no cheers" policy. No other student lost out on receiving their diploma.

As to my high school and the football player, well, nobody really cared. Football ranks number 4 on the list of sports people gave a crap about.