Friday, May 23rd marks the end of a long and successful high school career for hundreds of Nashoba students. Our principal, Dr. Graham, stated that in past years during this time of happiness and success, there has been an “unfortunate tradition at Nashoba that the seniors tend to try and cause some mayhem.” To attempt to circumvent any possible problems that could arise out of this “mayhem”, Dr. Graham has come up with a new way to celebrate graduation with less damage to school property. During their last week of school, seniors will get to participate in a number of activities like a Senior Breakfast planned by their parents.

Dr. Graham stresses the importance that seniors “feel like they are going out in style.” He wants to show that its possible to experience the wonderful and bittersweet departure from high school without destruction, vandalism, and accidental injury. Dr. Graham’s primary concern is the safety of Nashoba staff and students. When seniors last year set up a bouncy house in the courtyard he thought that was “relatively creative and [he] let it stand.” Pranks that “cross [his] line” are when students “act in an unsafe way or a way that disrupts the learning happening in the rest of the school.”

Dr. Graham is certainly no stranger to rebellion. He tells the story “I did have an act of defiance…. We were not supposed to throw our caps up in the air and so they asked all the seniors to sign a pledge not to throw our caps in the air … and I thought that was absurd so I refused to sign it. The repercussion was you wouldn’t receive your diploma. You could still participate in graduation ceremonies but you wouldn’t receive your diploma on the stage. They would hand you an empty folder, essentially. You would have to pick up your diploma later. So I refused to sign it. They still gave me my diploma…I wanted to be treated like an adult.” The lesson from this story, says Dr. Graham, is that “the behavior I saw last year was not adult like behavior.” In order to be treated like adults, students should treat their school and the staff members in a respectful and adult way.

What may seem like light-hearted pranks and jokes can actually be very hurtful to staff members who have come to be very close to seniors after many years of teaching and mentoring them. Dr. Graham says that it often goes from feeling like a funny joke to actions that seem to “disrespect teachers, staff, everybody else in the building and … I know its not the way they mean it, but that’s the way it feels to everybody else. Its a sour note to end the year on.”

This year’s seniors certainly have proved that they have class and character as they ended their time here at Nashoba in a way that is fitting for such a wonderful group of people. The entire school community is excited that the seniors have chosen to live up to Dr. Graham’s expectations! Good luck, class of 2014!