Tag Archives: senior tradition

High School Coming-of-Age Rite

Text:

H: “Each class had its color, like I was the yellow class. So there was like a spirit day where you all wore your colors and at the end of the day, the seniors would jump in [a big fountain on the school’s campus] first and with all their kilts on – like our uniform kilts – and no one else was allowed to wear their kilt. And like they were allowed to go in the water like class by class you went in. So like senior, junior, sophomore, freshman, but like only the seniors could wear their kilt. And that was like a fun thing to jump in the pool ’cause like you weren’t really, the pool wasn’t used. It wasn’t like used for swim practice; it was only used this day. Yeah, it was like a fountain type thing. So yeah, if you were senior, you could wear your kilt. And I remember one year, like a freshman wore her kilt and she was like heavily trash talked, ’cause you’re not supposed to do that. It’s like a respect thing.“

Context:

H went to an all-girls high school in Philadelphia. Every grade level was assigned a color, and on spirit day they would wear their colors and jump into the school’s fountain in grade level order. However, only seniors were allowed to jump into the fountain wearing their kilt – a special piece of the school uniform.

Analysis:

High school seniors exist in a space of liminality: they are in-between youth and adulthood. Because they exist in the doorway between identities, many rites of passages are created to celebrate and commemorate the time. “Communitas” is created because of the special bond seniors form together as they transpire the liminality between youth and adulthood. This establishes sacredness of rites of passage. They are something to be earned that one cannot attain prior to their own existence in liminality. That is why students at H’s school would become very upset if a non-senior wore their kilt while jumping into the fountain – the ritual is being broken and its sacredness is being tarnished.

High School Senior Streaking Prank

Nationality: American
Age: college age
Occupation: student
Residence: Los Angeles
Primary Language: English

IG: Ha, every year in high school in the spring the seniors would go to someone’s house who lived next to the high school and take off all their clothes and then we would run through the high school campus and it was really funny because everybody would leave class to watch us and then everybody would get their grade docked because all the teacher were hella against it and then every year the principal would stand there with just his like arms crossed but also like shading his eyes because it was so weird to look at your students naked but it was so funny because we would wear masks, obviously, so it would be kind of anonymous but then one year (laughs) my best friend fell (laughs) and she was bleeding and then somebody- like her mask like sorta fell off and then somebody in the crowd ripped it off so she had to (laughs) she had to run naked and bleeding and her face was out through like- we have a huge campus because it was a really big public school and it was really funny and then once we got to the end of the route of the run the gates were all locked so we all had to climb over a fence which was so painful because your bare legs are out and everything, but it was so fun and it happens every year so you just have to do it even if you don’t really want to-

VG: Oh my god!

IG: Yeah

VG: Where- Where- Where did you go to high school?

IG: ****** High School.

VG: Is that in ****, ****?

IG: Yeah, it has like 4,000 students.

A: Yeah, sorry, that sounds a lot like ****.

IG: Yeah, totally.

VG: That’s so funny though.

IG: It was rite of passage for sure.

VG: Yeah.

IG: Yeah, but also like so inappropriate. We wer-We were on the streets of Berkeley naked cause we had to get from the house to the school.

VG: So, it’s illegal.

(A laughs)

IG: Yeah, exactly. I know! And people were drinking and…I mean you had to get up some nerve- probably a lot of people, so…it was like extra illegal and then you would have friends who would be the getaway cars, waiting for you, which was so hard to ma- like manage because not everyone can fit. And then one year, it was so chaotic that somebody- my neighbor like crashed into another car- not like badly, but he just like skimmed the side, and everybody’s already trying to get you in trouble that day, so then just to do that next to the school was so bad- but then it was ok because the school was pretty lenient because everybody got in trouble all the time…so yeah. It was great.

 

Background:

Location of story – Northern California  

Location of Performance – Classroom, Los Angeles, CA, late morning

 

Context: This performance was done in a group of 3-4 people after a class in response to a question about potential high school traditions, festivals, jokes, or riddles. IG was unsure at first and then was enthusiastic about sharing once she remembered this story. Hers followed one joke made. IG and I are classmates. I censored the high school name for privacy reasons. 

 

Analysis: There are many obvious and severe breeches of normal social decorum as well as the law in the continuation of this tradition. The fact that it still exists demonstrates how integral this performance is to the school and surrounding community’s identity; if they did not see that it was worth the benefits, they would most likely be able to stop with with increased police force or harsher punishments. I think this performance is particularly interesting because it demonstrates that just because some rituals and traditions may be illegal, they are often so engrained into the identity of the community that it is difficult to stop the practice and nearly impossible to remove the memories from the community’s mind if it continues. I myself have participated in senior pranks, but this was still shocking to me. Additionally, I thought it was funny that other student knew the exact location of where this prank took place. Evidently, this prank was not just fitting to the identity of the high school community but to the identity of the town as well. In fact, the other student was not even from the town and was able to identity its attitude and myth.