Students began throwing glow sticks, hitting dancers, cheerleaders, students and teachers after they were given them at the final pep assembly of the year, which was glow-in-the-dark themed. The initial excitement of the lights being turned off resulted in the throwing of students’ glow sticks, which didn’t pose a serious problem.
“The first thing we saw was the lights went out and every student just started throwing their glow sticks on the court,” principal Sean DeMaree said. “That really didn’t bother me a whole lot.”
However, after students began throwing glow sticks, DeMaree observed some students appeared to be intentionally throwing glow sticks at others.
“The parts that really bothered me were watching students in all four grade levels, not just tossing things, but actually targeting people,” DeMaree said. “Watching teachers get hit in the head with glow sticks, watching Mr. Mervosh [get] one thrown at him, watching a group of cheerleaders doing stunts and [having] one thrown at them.”
The issue escalated throughout the duration of the assembly.
“They were throwing water bottles, and then someone’s shoe got thrown in the middle of the court. So it just goes from innocent mistakes and things that are annoying to we’re actually trying to cause harm to other people. And that’s where that line kind of crossed for me,” DeMaree said.
Other teachers who were present at the pep assembly acknowledged that while it was expected, it was still disrespectful.
“I kind of predicted that as soon as the lights went out, students were going to start throwing things and that’s exactly what happened. The lights went out, the cheerleaders started to roll the mats up and started getting pelted with glow sticks,” psychology teacher Jennifer Schlicht said. “And then continued having glow sticks chucked at people throughout the duration of the assembly, and even there was a shoe thrown at the Golden Girls as they were getting ready to perform, which is not okay.
Senior Lakin Albers, who conducted the assembly as a member of Falcon Flight crew, also observed the student behavior as disruptive to the pep assembly.
“Students kept throwing glow sticks at all of us and were just not cooperative whatsoever. We were supposed to throw the glow sticks at the end when we did “I believe,” but they started throwing them at the beginning because I guess they didn’t understand what we were saying,” Albers said. “ I mean, we had to clean up glow sticks as soon as they hit the floor, so it messed up the flow.”
Senior Marissa Kohl admits that while the glow sticks being thrown was disruptive, she doesn’t believe that students were doing it to hurt anyone.
“I think it was a good idea to have a glow in the dark pep assembly, but it was just giving irresponsible high schoolers glow sticks,” Kohl said. “It put other people in danger, like when the cheerleaders were tumbling and the dancers were trying to dance because we didn’t want to slip and then fall while performing,” Kohl said. “I don’t think they meant any harm, they were just trying to be funny.”
Some students who attended the assembly and were given glow sticks also perceived the issue to be due to miscommunication between students and teachers, in which students didn’t understand what they were supposed to do with the glow sticks.
“At the very beginning, everyone didn’t really know what was happening and someone threw their glow stick and people just followed,” sophomore AnnaBrita Wolcott said. “And they kept throwing because they didn’t know what was happening because there was no communication on what was going to happen. We were just told, here’s a glow stick, something is going to happen. It was very unorganized.”
Junior Rue Kolenda indicated that a combination of miscommunication and misunderstanding led to students throwing their glow sticks.
“Our speaker system is blasted, as everyone knows, so everyone around me at least heard ‘throw them’ at the very beginning of the pep assembly. I believe what was said was ‘hold onto them’. And we’ll just throw them at the end,” Kolenda said. “But we just heard to throw and everyone around me was like, “throw your glow stick, throw your glow stick,” and I was like, ‘okay, guess I’ll listen, because everyone else is doing it.”
Schlicht acknowledges the problem with the pep assembly to be that of the apparent misunderstanding on the behalf of students and miscommunication on behalf of staff.
“We just gave kids glow sticks but didn’t tell them anything about the glow sticks. We just handed them glow sticks and sent them to a pep assembly. And the speakers in that gym are so bad that even though one of the flight crew kids said, hey, hang on to those till the end, nobody heard it, because no one can hear anything in that gym. So maybe had we been told to tell our advisory students as we were passing them out, hang on to it till the end, there’s going to be something at the end, then more people would have held onto them,” Schlicht said.
Culinary teacher Stephanie DuPree perceives the issue was students throwing glow sticks at the very beginning, rather than holding onto them.
“I think that Ms. Schmitt spent a lot of time on that pep assembly and it was supposed to go a different way, and our students decided to be disrespectful and throw the glow sticks when at the end they were going to throw them anyway,” DuPree said. “So, you’ve got how many kids were given glow sticks and how long that takes to prepare all of those different items and games that they had, and [students] kind of blew it at the beginning.”
Junior Cameron Gonzales thinks that while students should have more maturity, the events that occurred were not surprising.
“I was surprised at the lack of common sense and human decency. But also, I wasn’t very surprised. I mean, if you have a room full of a bunch of high school students, most of them being immature, and you give them things to throw, and it’s in the dark,” Gonzales said. “I wouldn’t say that it wasn’t communicated right, because maybe they could have said ‘don’t throw them until the end’ and I bet less people would have, but I still think that it was just, a people thing and just cause people thought it was funny.”
Other students, such as senior Brooke Burbidge, thought that the pep assembly was a great idea and the glow stick ordeal was exaggerated.
“No one was upset really. It’s just like, you give 2,000 students glow sticks, we all knew what was going to happen. Everyone did overreact, because we all went to class and nobody cared about it as much as people thought. We went to cheer and we all just said it was so much fun and that we don’t want a boring pep assembly again, we just want it to be fun,” Burbidge said.
English teacher and dance coach Victoria Gosselaar is open to trying the pep assembly again in the future, with more concrete expectations in place.
“I think that next time if we were to do it, we would need to set some better expectations for the kids. But overall, we should definitely keep pushing those really fun ideas, because it’s fun for the kids and it’s fun for everybody involved,” Gosselaar said.
Following the pep assembly, DeMaree addressed students at all three lunches, expressing his discontent with the immaturity displayed at the assembly.
“My hope is that these students heard me during lunch and that they hear [that] I do expect more out of us, and I do think we are better than what we are currently doing,” DeMaree said. “I want us to reach our full potential. I just hope that students get that message, it’s that I’m not mad. I’m just disappointed because I think we’re better than that.”
DeMaree believes the events that transpired at the assembly are indicative of larger issues within the school community.
“It’s a pep rally, we don’t tend to follow rules as much during a pep rally. But then also we walk the halls and we make fun of people. And we bully people, we put people down, or we use derogatory terms for people who are of a different gender or sexuality or race, or whatever it might be, a religion, you know those things are all just a deeper version of what happened during that pep assembly,” DeMaree said. “So we see things like that. It’s just disheartening to go, we’re still not in a place where we’re treating each other, like we truly care about one another.”
