When a few rogue Bonny Eagle High School students began batting beach balls around the Cumberland County Civic Center Friday evening, they probably didn’t imagine their graduation ceremony would wind up on cnn.com a few days later as a result.
But that’s just where the story appeared Tuesday amid the flap over the ejection of one student from the Civic Center during the graduation ceremony and the superintendent’s refusal to grant another student his diploma after he bowed and blew a kiss to the audience.
It’s too bad this controversy is now overshadowing the accomplishments of these students, after four years of hard work. Nowhere in any of these stories that have been written on the ceremony are the names of the top students in class.
For the record, they are Andrea Ballute, Clinton Cyr, Perry Cyr, Kimberly DuBois, Jacob Good, Troy Hollihan, Heather Lewis, Celeste Lozier, Ashley Pettengill, Jennifer Reaves, Lauren Snow, Stacy Sullivan and Lauren Wallace.
As valedictorian, Ballute delivered an excellent speech, in which she urged her classmates to think about and appreciate all of the memories they had accumulated during their time in school and their lives leading up to that moment.
“Remember how it felt to march onto this stage,” she said. “Remember how it will feel to clasp that diploma. And remember how it will feel to look back at your classmates and know that we all made it here today, together, as a class.”
Unfortunately, what many of them will remember about Friday night and what most people are talking about this week is Superintendent Suzanne Lukas’ refusing to give Justin Denney his diploma after he bowed and blew a kiss to the crowd and a Cumberland County sheriff’s deputy escorting a couple of grads from the stage.
Denney’s mother is now demanding an apology, and some parents and students are now accusing administrators of overreacting to the unruly behavior of students, all of whom had apparently signed behavior contracts before the ceremony agreeing not to throw beach balls, a student tradition at Bonny Eagle.
All graduation ceremonies are a mixture of solemn occasion and celebration. Although many parents and administrators would probably prefer the graduates save the celebration until after the ceremony, the reality is the party often permeates into the “Pomp and Circumstance.”
In this instance, some students probably did cross the line, and administrators probably overreacted. But that shouldn’t stop anyone from getting a diploma, and this shouldn’t mar the memory of the commencement ceremony. Most of these students will probably look back on this experience and laugh: Remember how it felt to be on CNN.
Most importantly, however, the events of Friday night shouldn’t overshadow the hard work and achievements of all these students, who deserve to be in the spotlight for their accomplishments rather than throwing a few beach balls.
Brendan Moran, editor
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