This story originally appeared in the sixth edition of The Lion’s Tale (May 4, 2017). 

Senior privileges: a favorite feature of each year of seniors. They are one of the things that the underclassmen look forward to for their entire high school careers.

They are privileges, however, so they can be taken away–like they have been this year. Senior privileges have been suspended for the remainder of the 2016-2017 school year. The rumor was that there were too many fights at school.

According to principal Joe Trybus, there was a different reason.

“What [administration] started to see about two months ago was that there were groups of students who would have a substitute, and they would try and talk the sub into letting them out 10 minutes early, and even 15 minutes early, and they would say, ‘Well, we’re all seniors, we are allowed to,’” Trybus said.

Leaving early for lunch, going-off campus for lunch, leaving school five minutes early and attending fewer school days are a few benefits of being a senior, most of which have been restricted.

The biggest issue, to many seniors, is not being able to leave campus five minutes early at the end of the day to beat the traffic, and to leave five minutes early on Tuesdays and Thursdays to go off-campus for lunch.

“It’s kind of upsetting, knowing we have waited four years for this, and now we don’t have the ability to leave five minutes early,” said senior Brianna Waggoner.

Senior Joshua Figueroa agrees.

“Since seniors waited this long to get here, we should be able to have some privileges other than what juniors and sophomores and freshmen have,” Figueroa said.

Seniors see this restriction as a big deal because the traffic in the junior parking lot in the front of the school is chaotic and causes major traffic issues. It can take up to 30 minutes to get out of the parking lot alone.

Although the seniors have their own parking lot in the back of the school, the traffic is still bad because they are trying to leave the campus at the same time as the rest of the school.

“It is hard for everyone because not everyone that parks in the senior parking lot are seniors, so it’s hard trying to get in and out because students don’t park in their right parking lots,” said senior Christian Abrahams.

Another reason that the privileges were revoked was because a vast majority of the student body was not taking the attendance policy very seriously.

“There are actually 31 pages of kids who have violated the attendance policy, and that’s hundreds and hundreds of kids who need to go to make up time,” Trybus said.

Attendance can affect seniors directly. Students can start losing credit for the courses they are taking, which can impact whether they graduate.

The punishments have affected seniors more than other grades, but it doesn’t mean that the seniors are giving up their privileges easily.

“It showed that administration has power over us,” Waggoner said. “We’re now upset over this, and it’s shown that the senior class can unify and can fight against it.”

Abrahams agrees.

“We all have rights; we have freedom of speech,” Abrahams said.  “I think we have a voice and we are united as a senior class.”

Though the privileges are frozen for the Class of 2017, Trybus expects them to return in the fall. Trybus stated that he is considering new ideas, as well, such as allowing seniors to leave campus early every day for senior lunch.

“I would be open to new suggestions for other privileges for seniors,” Trybus said.