Sometimes, it really is good to stand up to the Man—particularly when the Man in question is being played by a collection of heavy-handed bureaucrats willing to wield power as capriciously as a transient drunk on ripple wields his pecker. From the RMN:
Five Illinois students will get the diplomas they were denied when cheers erupted for them at a high school graduation, and school officials said Wednesday they would review a get-tough decorum policy.
Galesburg High School officials had said they would not hand over the keepsake diplomas unless they received apologies. But the stalemate over the diplomas and the media attention it attracted have taken valuable time and energy, they said.
Translation: “we thought nobody would notice. Oopsy!”
What I don’t fully understand—beyond, of course, the decision to punish students for being excited at a graduation ceremony in the first place—is just who was supposed to apologize? If I’m reading this correctly, the students had their diplomas withheld because they were cheered — meaning that school officials were either asking them to apologize for the actions of those assembled, or else they were requiring those assembled to apologize before they’d reward the cheered students with diplomas.
Both of which scenarios seem equally ludicrous—and both of which, sadly, are now moot, given that the whole point of the ceremonial bestowing of the diplomas is that they be bestowed at the ceremony.
So congratulations to school officials at Galesburg High School! You have effectively robbed these students and their families of what should have been a fond memory—even if in doing so you provided them with a valuable life lesson about how absolute power, particularly when it is being flung about by bureaucratic dead enders, can corrupt absolutely.
Which is a lesson they probably would have learned eventually anyway when it came time to file taxes, or deal with the MVA.
Schools always get tough on the wrong things, and bend over like the slender guy in the turkish bathouse over the stuff that really matters.
‘Course, in some matter their hands are tied by the Superintendent, who is tied up by the board, who are too boring for the electorate to care about.
Meanwhile, have you heard about Bradgelina Hilton-Lohan?
Hm.
I’m stupid and, consequently, confused.
Are you saying that the students were denied diplomas during the ceremony, at the moment they were walking across the stage, because some of the crowd cheered for them?
Is this a real news story or did you discover a new side effect from mixing Klonipan with Bailey’s Irish Cream and a pigeon taco?
One of the girls interviewed on the radio said just that: “I don’t have anything to apologize for.” Five hundred yards around every school is a fun-free zone.
The world is full of petty tyrants….well high school is anyway.
Most of them are Assistant principals.
In fact, Nostradamus predicted that the anti-Christ will arise from a medium-sized Junior High somewhere in the mid-west after an epidemic of “mustard pack stomping” by the music room door.
I shit you not.
Enforcement’s a bitch, ain’t it?
I understand why they wouldn’t necessarily want a bunch of cheering with each student crossing the stage–even a small graduating class would take all freakin’ day to finish–but actually enforcing that ban is so close to impossible that it’s certain to have everyone thinking you’re a complete idiot, and justifiably so.
Sure absolute power currupts absolutely, but it also rocks absolutely.
I thought the quote was wrong until I read further. I try to figure out what people are thinking sometimes and really get nothing for the effort.
Mental anguish lawsuit in 3, 2, 1…
Hooooraaaaaay!!
Oops, sorry…