With the school year coming to an end, the senior class is itching to get out of the halls of their old alma mater and into the real world.
Before they leave most seniors are eager to participate in the old high school traditions specifically set aside for seniors.
Senior skip day, senior pranks and walking for graduation are all things that seniors look forward to.
Most seniors have spent years taking honors classes, staying up late, coming to school sick and killing themselves to do well in high school.
Seniors work hard all year filling out college applications, applying for scholarships and planning their future. Most of them do homework and work throughout the entire school year, too.
We live in a world where kids are expected to grow up younger and younger in order to be a successful and ambitious adult, sometimes forgetting that high school may be the last few years a student has to be a kid.
Twenty years ago senior skip days, pranks and graduation were all just a fun part of high school.
Today, they’re used as some kind of threat or bargaining chip. In today’s world, any amount of childhood you have left in you is quickly discouraged by anyone that sees it as a possible threat to their establishment.
Senior pranks, when done respon-sibly, are harmless rights of passage and a quintessential high school ex-perience. As long as the prank doesn’t disrupt the learning process, vandalize property or cost the school money, they should be allowed.
Walking for graduation should not be used as a threat. It is the right of the person that has poured their blood, sweat and tears into twelve years of hard work to decide whether they par-ticipate in this specific right of pas-sage.
Times have changed. What used to be viewed as harmless fun is now seen as the dealings of lazy delin-quents.