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What power does the graduating student have that the school administrators do not have to control the crowd? The ACLU spokesman should remember that the school’s ability to control the “decorum” at an event does not extend further than the boundaries of each individual’s civil rights. That means the school must confine their actions to the persons that are in violation of the rules, and does not somehow magically transfer individual responsibility for someone else’s actions to the student they cheer for.

Apply that skewed logic to other situations, and it quickly becomes clear just how idiotic the school’s position is.

For example, at the next school board meeting, the superintendent rises to give a short speech. Every time he makes a good point, three citizens in the back of the room cheer and whistle loudly. So the local policeman in attendance grabs the superintendent by the arm and escorts him out of the building for disrupting the meeting.

Does that sound at all sensible to anyone with a pulse and the mental capacity of an eight year-old?

Or imagine what would happen at the next presidential debate in which the moderator, having asked the audience to hold its applause until the end of the debate, expelled one of the candidates because the crowd cheered at an especially good one-liner. The moderator would be considered extremely fortunate if he managed to avoid tar and feathering!

The bottom line is that most of the young people graduating are over 18, and considered adults with the full compliment of rights belonging to adults, in the eyes of the law. The school administrators, being accustomed to imposing their arbitrary will on children who are not considered to be endowed with the full set of rights that comes with adulthood, are showing just how arbitrary that power can be when it is wielded by authoritarians without conscience. They might get away with it in the classroom where children are subject to that arbitrary power, but the adults that walk across the stage, having earned the right to their diplomas, have also earned the right to never again be subject to the whim of arbitrary power.

They should exercise that right, and demand that they receive the diplomas they have earned, teaching the “educators” a lesson in the personal humility endemic to a free society.

Personally, I would prefer to abolish public school entirely, and instead provide vouchers redeemable at schools under private control. With the public school system, the poli-crats get to control every aspect of the educational experience, resulting in involuntary psychoanalysis, “sex education” that violates personal standards of decency and morality, “zero tolerance” policies that teach kids to accept gun control, drugging kids into a stupor with Ritalin, and “prayer in schools” debates with communist lawyers who twist the First Amendment on one side versus right-wing politicians who take the stance of “I Heart God More Than That Yonder Candidate” while snorting coke and cheating on their wives.

After thirteen years of school, of pursueing near impossible studies, bad teachers, peer pressure, bullies, struggling to fit in, and sometimes, basically hell, graduation should be something joyous.

A walk across the stage, people should cheer for you. You’ve made it that far, against so many troubles. You’ve done what still many couldn’t.

And to withhold the degrees because people want to make it joyous? Fun? Something to be happy about?

Asking for some degree of politeness is correct. Like no ripping off your robe and streaking, or throwing eggs at someone. But witholding the degrees for a beach ball? For cheering? Then making them do work?

No. That’s not all right. These people need to pull the large stick out of their ass and loosen up. Graduation should be a time of happiness, not a time of rigid formality.