I have held on to these comments for over two months, but cannot let them go.
I am writing to express my profound disappointment in the families and friends of the Fairfield Central High School graduating class of 2014. The crowd as a whole was disrespectful toward graduates who were not family or close friends. The shrieking, cat-calling and whooping for “their” graduates was ridiculous, embarrassing and disrespectful to others. I barely heard my family member’s name because of the incessant screaming and yelling around me.
One man in particular – the father of graduate – was particularly disrespectful. With each new speaker that took the podium, this man whined that we were going to listen to the same words from a different person, and why did we have to waste our time listening to someone else. Some people found his jabs funny, which only caused him to continue acting like a jerk. As they started to read names of graduates, this man yelled very loudly that they needed to hurry up because it was about to rain and we were going to get wet. This was so loud that the graduates turned around from their seats on the field to look for the speaker in the crowd.
Taking pride in your graduate is wonderful and at most high school graduations there are people who ignore requests for quiet and respect for the other graduates, screaming too loud or too long. But this was unlike anything I’ve seen before. People were screaming like their child/friend/relative had just won a Nobel Prize. Maybe in a high school where only about 74 percent of the senior class actually matriculates, high school graduation is seen as the best thing these kids will ever do. I hope you see the problem with this – the bar is being set too low for these kids!
With two more Fairfield Central High School graduations to attend in coming years, I hope to see an improvement in the behavior of the crowd, and in the graduation rate of future senior classes.
Amanda Mears
Lexington