Senior year of high school: It is supposed to be a year for students to enjoy themselves and be able to have one last chance to create memories that will last a lifetime before having to grow up and go out into the real world.
A prime example of this would be the Spirit Week leading up to the homecoming football game. Sadly, members of the Starr’s Mill High School administration have taken the “spirit” out of Spirit Week.
Freshman and sophomore year, there used to be five days of dress-up and fun that ranged from twin day to toga day. But, starting my junior year, Spirit Week was suddenly shortened to three days. Now, dress-up days only range from Wednesday through Friday, severely limiting times for students to make memories and have some fun.
A simple question I have is why can McIntosh have five full days of dress-up while Starr’s Mill only can have three? Do McIntosh students act better than Starr’s Mill students? Are McIntosh students more conservative with dressing up than Starr’s Mill students?
Simply put, the answer is no. The problem with Spirit Week is that certain members of the administration at SMHS cannot handle any sort of dress-up or fun at all.
Case in point: on Sept. 16, we the senior class thought it would be fun to dress up as senior citizens to highlight that we are the new senior class. So, we all came into school with walkers, canes, and hair grayed with baby powder to show our school and class pride.
We were met with surprisingly harsh force from the administration. Students were given one-way tickets to in-school suspension and were threatened with the possibility of insubordination charges if anyone dared to dress up again for Tuesday.
What was so wrong with students shuffling around school and faking heart attacks during 10-minute break? The idea of an administration threatening a nearly 400-student class with insubordination is ludicrous, and it makes them look like they just make up rules as they go.
Tuesday brought its own complications. The senior class was supposed to tailgate in the back of the school before school started, eating Chick-fil-A and having a good time for “College Day,” but that was nixed when the administration threatened to cancel all of Spirit Week.
I would like someone to tell me how eating breakfast in the school parking lot disrupts the learning process of students, if it is supposed to happen before the 8:45 start time.
Spirit Week used to be a fun-filled event that created a sense of school and class camaraderie, but now it has turned into an ugly war between students trying to have a sense of spirit, and certain members of the administration trying to crush it.
There is a motto we go by at SMHS: “Make it a great day or not, the choice is yours.” It is clear that the students know how to make the day great at Starr’s Mill. If only members of the administration could learn how to live by that motto as well.
Justin Doil
Class of 2014
Peachtree City, Ga.
