Students don't get diploma due to excess cheering from crowd
 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070602/...uation_decorum

You know what, it saddens me of the lack of decorum we see here in graduation. I went to my sister's 8th grade graduation last week, and I was appalled at the lack of respect of the guest. I know it's only an 8th grade graduation, but still...
I have read a letter to the editor concerning this problem. I can't let you read it because I don't want to reveal the city because you guys will guess my school's name. But I tell you the letter in detail. The man and his sister-in-law was trying to shush up the people that were talking excessively. But the people had threatened them by saying "don't make me bring my hood out on you."

On another message board, there was this man who went to his son's graduation and there were excessive cheering that was constant.

I have seen other colleges come up with a system where if you make a whole lot of noise costantly, then you will get kick out from watching the ceremony. I wonder if they can do that in the schools. I mean graduation is a special time, and I hate it when people ruin it.

It is quite annoying when it's excessive. It felt good to hear my family and friends cheering for me, but they weren't yelling at "Yo das mah mama" or other loud, obnoxious cheering. A "woooo" is enough.

Personally, I don't think anything other than restrained applause is appropriate.

I think we're getting to the point at which we act like everything is a sporting event, and it's not.

A graduation ceremony should be dignified and sedate, and when people sound air horns or cowbells, like I heard at an honors night event this year- no joke, we should probably stop having the events at all or at least stop reading individual names.

Even if you don't buy in to the idea of decorum, when people freak out at their relatives' names, they often prevent the name of the next person from being heard and doing do is selfish and wrong.

I agree that there should be decorum, or at least not excessive cheering, however, the student has no control over the actions of the crowd. Throw the offending audience members out, but withholding a diploma, or requiring a student to do community service because of the actions of his or her family? Stupid.

It might seem stupid in the short term, but as long as there are people making sure they identify the actual guests of the graduate in question, this policy will be the most effective in the long run.

If your family is so proud of your graduation that they want to blast an air horn, they probably aren't going to risk your not getting a diploma because they made a bunch of inappropriate noise.

Many of the low class folks consider the ceremony over once their graduate's name is read anyway; getting kicked out then wouldn't be much of a penalty.

Plus, there are a lot of folks eager to make an even bigger scene when they get kicked out.

Really, following through with the graduate probably will work the best. If a graduate is worried that someone won't act right, she shouldn't invite him or her.

This assumes that the graduate gets to choose whether or not to invite her family. I'm pretty sure my parents made the guest list when I was in high school.

The statement the student makes in the last line of the article was one of the first things that I thought of. If there was some grudge against an individual, people could excessively cheer for that student and get that student in trouble. How do they prove that the excessive cheers were done by that person's family?

Right, but your parents probably wouldn't invite anyone likely to cause you to lose your diploma.

As far as it not really being that person's guests, I'm sure that can be checked out by the same folks doing the monitoring for crowd behavior. (Ticket numbers if they use tickets, using tickets in the future if they don't now.)

It's not that I think this policy is flawless, but do you really think those weren't her guests? Even she seems to express it as a "what if" kind of a statement.

Anyway, something needs to be done, and I applaud (and air horn) this school's efforts.

We didn't have tickets or invites or anything. Everybody knew when graduation was and everybody went. I had a class of over 700 and we had our graduation in the Pontiac Silverdome, which held 85,000 people. It would have been impossible to monitor.

I agree that something should be done, but to the guests, not the students. Students have no control over how their guests behave.

When my daughter was inducted into the National Junior Honor Society last week, some of us parents were teasing the girls in her group that we were going to hoot and holler when their names were called. The girls were horrified at the thought. Of course, we weren't going to really do it, but the looks on their 13 year old faces were classic when we threatened!

But they're the only ones the school can realistically expect to influence. And their guests could be influenced by them to act appropriately if they understood the consequences.

I think we're either going to go for free for all graduations will no expectations for behavior or we'll start to see tickets given to graduates and guest lists of people that the graduate accepts responsibility for.

I suspect that kicking people out for disruption and arresting people who refused to leave probably wouldn't play any better and would actually be worse, but I'm afraid that's the other option.

The note about your daughter touches on a point worth making: you all weren't going to really do it, but I think some of the bad behavior at graduation is against the graduates wishes. So let's empower them to choose their guests and hold them responsible for the ones that they do invite.

I agree.

I agree...and perhaps this should be communicated in a memo when people receive their tickets in the days *BEFORE* the event, so that they know the reason WHY they may clap, but nothing more "expressive". There are a lot of dense people out there....they need to have things like this pointed out & explained to them.

I don't think it happens because they don't know any better. It's because they don't care.

Sure, I think making accepting tickets contingent on following the behavior expectations would be great. Maybe they could sign something when they picked them up, and then when they were kicked out, officials could present it at court.

But I've been at many events at which announcements were made at the start of the event to absolutely no avail.

Some people don't care about others. If there's no penalty for them and theirs, they really don't give a flip about ruining the experience of others. Making a big scene and then getting kicked out wouldn't mar the day as far as they were concerned; it would just ruin it for everyone else.

I think if the school in question sticks with its policy, in a few years, its graduations will be excellent. But what I predict will happen is that all the kids will get their diploma on appeal, so people will learn that nothing really happens so they will keep doing it.

Sigh. Maybe we should just quit having them. Or have only private events put on by groups of the graduates who could set their own standards for behavior.

Edited again to add: I sit through at least one graduation a year; I know everything that the staff does to make the event go well: talking to the kids, sending home letter, announcements at the event. And every year, there are kids who screw it up and guests who screw it up. Why should it be so hard to do something nice? I honest believe that if we had the "act up and no diploma for your graduate" rule, it would work. We'd probably have to add tickets to make sure we knew which guest belong to which graduate, but I really believe it would change the decorum at the event.

It might work, but is it right? I don't think it is.

Yeah, I think it's right. If you ask them, you take responsibility for them.

If you think they won't act right, then don't invite them.

I think it's perfectly okay to make the graduates responsible for the people that they invite, and not to let in folks who weren't invited.

Just because you finished the eight grade or high school or even college, doesn't mean that folks who know you should get to interrupt the ceremony for others.

It's better to "punish" the graduates who invited them later than to further interrupt the middle of the ceremony to remove the trashy people although I have no objection to trying to punish the disruptive people too if you can figure out how.

One of the things I loved best about teaching at a small private Christian high school was our graduation. It was the Evening Prayer Service from the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer - 1928. It was beautiful, dignified, and a fitting celebration of an event that marks such an important milestone. Even so, and even though it is held in a church, they had to make sure the students, parents and family and friends realized that they were expected to behave in a manner befitting the dignity and importance of the ceremony.
The first public high school graduation I attended after working at this school was a shock - air horns, beach balls, cow bells, whooping and hollering - I don't know how they could get control of that many people. It really cheapened the recognition of the achievement of those hard-working students.