Which graduation is right?

We're a few weeks past PHS's 2008 graduation, and I think now I'm ready to talk about what went down.

We sent about four hundred members of the Class of '08 across the stage at Cintas Center and handed each of them a diploma cover - to be filled in after the ceremony. There were a number of black-robed folks up on stage to escort them along - school board members, principals, central office folks, counselors - and the graduates were then ushered on along and down the steps on the far side of the stage.

I took up my usual and awesome vantage point right at the stairs up onto the stage, keeping the timing right, pausing the grads for a moment before they headed up, reminding them to spit out any gum so they'd look right in their picture, congratulating nearly all of them, and generally making small talk to calm the last minute nerves of - especially - the girls who chose to wear the high heels for the first time ever.

Everything was note perfect from the time they gathered at PHS, loaded the busses bound for Cintas, lined up in the small gym, headed to their seats, and stepped toward the stage.

And that's where the heart attacks started...

"The Princeton Way" of graduating is a rather formal affair. The students are arrayed in alternating rows of red and white with the top students, foreign exchangers, and senior a capella folks up front. We get a couple of none-too-thrilling speaches, and the grads head to the stage.

Their names are read, the live video of the ceremony is shown (now with their names below them in the shot) on the scoreboard up in the rafters, they shake a couple of hands, and head onward. Applause is - according to the principal's request prior to the ceremony - to be held until the final graduate's diploma holder is handed out. No one graduate is to be celebrated individually. Family and friends are not to single out any one over the others.

This year, however...

We got students throwing down their mortarboards (never knew why it was called that, huh), whipping their dreadlocks around, stomping across the stage, dancing, shaking, opening their arms to the heavens, and generally doing a lot more celebrating individually than communally, no matter the gentle hands of administrators trying to usher them along. We got parents - honestly no worse than in the few years past - who set off air horns, clapped and cheered, and yelled - some during the initial processional, some as their graduates crossed the stages, some during the speaches.

And then we got principals and teachers talking afterwards about how to fix the problem...how to make sure that doesn't happen again next year.

We'll give 'em community service hours if they demonstrate like that.

We'll make them pick up their diploma a month later if their parents carry on like that.

We'll warn them in advance of their punishment.

We'll make the parents sign a behavior contract are else they don't walk.

We'll limit the number of tickets so they don't just hand out tickets to any fool in our hallways.

And I'm a little bothered by that.

My dad and mom both graduated from high school before I did, and my sister was certainly headed that way when I matriculated from good ol' NAHS. Heck, Dad had even checked off the whole college degree thing - with a bonus masters, too. (Mom's college experiences apparently involved drifiting off each spring so she could play Dylan songs in the sunshine. Not exactly a plan for getting handed a sheepskin.) They didn't scream my name when I shook hands back as part of the class of nine-two.

They didn't even scream or yell when I got my Wabash diploma - and that one really was printed on sheepskin. Admittedly, Mom tried to embarass me a different way, but that's a tale for another day.

Stay on topic, man...

When I was a high school freshman, my dad sat me down - probably at Mom's insistance, I know the man - and asked me what my goals were for the next four years. Did I want to try for valedictorian? Did I want to get straight A's? What did I want to accomplish?

Nope, none of those. I told him I figured I'd do well enough, but straight A's and the #1 ranking weren't important to me. (I finished #5, right behind Lexi Shallers, not that I'm bitter...) I guessed I wanted to make the radio staff so I could be on air (two years, lots of hours on air, thank you very much).

Did I at least want to graduate and head to college, he asked?

Well, yeah. I thought that was assumed...my flip answer.

In my head, not graduating from high school wasn't an option. I was at least going to get that far and was pretty sure I was going to graduate from college, too.

So there was no reason to whoop and holler for me.

But...

And I feel almost condescending in saying this...

Not every one of the students who went through commencement on June 2nd at Cintas knew they were going to graduate.

Not every one of them could have been so casual with saying that they were going to get a high school diploma.

Not every one of their parents had one, not every one of their siblings had one.

Getting that diploma is a big deal for some of them, something to be celebrated for the years of hard work and struggle, for the acknowledgement by the massive institution of PHS that they accomplished something.

And I'm kind of thinking that they deserve a chance to celebrate, a moment to bask in their glory.

Sure, there's a part of me that wonders just how ready they are for the real world, how good a job we've done in preparing them - particularly some of our graduates who just scraped through with low graduation test scores, low grades, and just few enough discipline issues to make it onto that stage...

But how can we congratulate them but ask them not to celebrate?

How can we please the half (probably more, maybe 2/3rd) of the crowd who still wants that calm, dignified ceremony while still allowing the students to celebrate their moment?

Maybe we need to have a mock ceremony in which we show them what is and what isn't appropriate...but who's to make that decision, draw that line?

Is it okay for a kid to wave to the crowd?

To whoop once?

To cry?

To blow a kiss toward her family?

To blow a kiss toward heaven?

To stomp once?

Twice?

Add in a holler of yes?

I have no idea...I know it wasn't what I was going to do, but that doesn't mean much, and lord knows I'm far from the final arbiter.

And just when have things gotten so far out of hand that the principal really does step forward and do as he and his predecessers have threatened and shut down a graduation? Is it worth killing the ceremony for four hundred graduates and a few thousand friends and family just because a dozen people aren't behaving the way we want them to - not the right way, I won't go that far?

What if it's thirty people whooping and hollering?

What if every fifth graduate moonwalks across the stage?

Every other?

And would that be wrong if they did?

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I don't, by the way, honestly have any clue how to solve this or even if it needs solving.

Your opinions are, as always, welcome.