It is graduation season and over the next couple of weeks thousands will graduate from high school and middle school in the shore area. You can be sure at just about all of those ceremonies a school principal or other administrator will ask those in attendance to hold their applause to the end as they read the names of the graduates.

Ocean County College Class of 2012 commencement
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They might even go on to remind spectators that there should be no blowing of horns or other special-effects to disturb the proceedings. Just as certain is the fact that those announcements will often fall on deaf-ears so this morning I raise the question….is cheering at graduation appropriate or disturbing?

I tend to choose the latter for what is really a simple reason. Parents are sitting inside a gymnasium or auditorium or outside on a football field waiting for the moment in which their child’s name is announced as a graduate.

 

There is not a lot of time between the readings of names, especially when you have class of over 500. So just before your child is announced the name of another student is read and his or her family starts screaming and cheering and generally carrying on.

Some laugh and think it’s funny but the problem is that while this obnoxious group is making noise the next graduate’s name was read and nobody heard it. Mom & Dad are not happy and they have a reason to be upset….not at the person reading the names but the morons who ignored the simple instructions to wait until the end.

By the way I am willing to bet that those who cheer like they’re at a football game are more often than not the parents of a kid who barely graduated and thinks the National Honor Society is a branch of the Armed Forces.

You might have heard that last week a parent was arrested and others were escorted out of a high school graduation ceremony in South Carolina for not following the rules of maintaining silence while students were receiving their diplomas. It was the students themselves who voted that it be quiet while the names were read but for some that was too much to ask and they got carried away and out of the building….screaming the entire time. I’m not advocating that but a graduation ceremony is indeed a ceremony and parents should realize it’s not an individual moment but rather very much one for an entire class.

We all want to cheer our children’s accomplishments and there is nothing wrong with that…heck we should be proud as graduation, especially from high school is a milestone. However if they ask simply hold your applause to the end and then go wild.

 

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