On the night of May 30, 21 Granite Bay High School students were disciplined for bringing illegal substances or coming under the influence to the annual Quad Dance. Three seniors were suspended pending expulsion.

According to GBHS principal Mike McGuire, the eight seniors who were caught will not be walking at the commencement ceremony on June 14. Of the eight, four appealed to McGuire for the privilege to graduate with their class, but their appeals were denied.

Upon their entrance into the quad Friday night or during the dance, the students were identified as being under the influence of alcohol, marijuana or narcotics, including ecstasy and oxycontin. The students were then sent directly to the administration office for questioning and testing.

GBHS assistant principal Brian McNulty said the administration and staff spent most of the night of the dance in the school office dealing with the unfortunate disciplinary actions.

Each one of 1,200 GBHS students who attended quad dance underwent a frisk search and were required to check bags to prevent any questionable substances on campus. However, it wasn’t enough.

“You can’t bring anything in and kids, as far as I know, did not get alcohol in,” GBHS activities director Tamera Givens said. “They came under the influence.”

The 21 students disciplined were either caught in the parking lot outside of the dance or as they were on their way through the gate, hoping to get safely passed the teachers patting students down at the entrance.

“You could tell (who the kids under the influence were),” GBHS teacher and dance chaperone Deserie Milburn said. “I think the students gave it away because right when they were up at the very front (of the entrance line), they started acting unusually nervous, and so it was really obvious to figure out.”

According to McNulty, the students also were in violation of numerous education codes that night. The use of chemical substances, disruption and defiance of authority and failure to comply with school dance policies are all disciplinary infractions the 21 students are being charged with.

Compounding the punishment for the seniors was the controversy surrounding their privilege of walking across the stage at graduation.

A committee of teachers oversees the senior conduct board, which is in charge of granting or revoking privileges to senior students.

Members of the boys’ soccer team, who in the fall were suspended after bringing marijuana on a school trip, were put on senior conduct and the committee revoked their privilege to walk at the ceremony. They appealed to the committee, but the committee denied the appeal.

McGuire, however, overruled the graduation ban for the soccer players and granted the eight senior athletes the right to walk.

The students caught at quad dance, however, will not be allowed to walk at graduation.

“They will still get a diploma,” McNulty said. “The way it stands is that the committee can uphold a decision to deny the graduation ceremony to a senior.”

The senior conduct appeals process models the court system of the United States – students can appeal, and then the committee rules, but the committee can be overruled by a higher power.

And in the case of GBHS, that higher power is McGuire.

“It’s a two-fold system in place to ensure everyone has a fair hearing. It adds credence to the system as well as questions (it),” McNulty said.

However, McGuire’s decision to allow the soccer seniors, but deny the dance seniors, has caused a rift in the committee and on campus.

From the time of their suspensions in October, McGuire said the soccer players had clean records, good behavior and were respectful of their punishments. The boys had eight months to redeem themselves and work to clear their tainted records. McGuire believed they deserved to walk at graduation.

McGuire said these students had shown true redemption and had actually had gone through life-altering processes that were extremely admirable.

But for the students suspended from the Quad Dance, there wasn’t enough time to prove themselves worthy of redemption.

McGuire said he met with all the seniors in the cafeteria during STAR week and specifically warned students against making unwise choices at the Quad Dance. He was hoping this would be enough of a deterrent to prevent students from losing graduation privileges.

A senior who was suspended at the Quad Dance, and who asked to remain anonymous, lost his graduation privileges because he had alcohol in his system.

“I don’t feel that the school’s policies are meant to help students in this situation, or teach them a lesson,” he said. “They are just punishing us and (therefore just) hurting us.”

The ramifications of suspensions are felt throughout the campus, according to Milburn.

Five of the 21 students caught at the dance were in her dance class, and their suspensions affected the class dance show that happened the week of June 2.

“We’re trying to scramble and put on our dance show and change spots around,” she said. “They worked so hard learning all their dances, and they were in the front for a lot of them, and so it was a bummer that they did miss out on that,” Milburn said.

Milburn said she hoped that at least they had learned a lesson from the punishment, and that what she was most disappointed about was the fact that none of these students ever apologized for causing the disruption to the dance program.

For some teachers and others, the date of the dance is an issue. For the seniors who will not be walking, the school-wide event is held dangerously close to the end of the school year.

In the past, students attending the dance, which is held two weeks before the end of school, have enough time to recover from suspensions and return back to class – and to the commencement ceremony.

If Quad Dance was held a week later, for example, seniors with five-day suspensions would not have time to return to school and take their finals.

McNulty said the cushion of space between the dance and graduation is a way to “ensure that as many people as possible get to graduate.”

However, McGuire is willing to have discussions about separating Day ant the Bay and the Quad Dance, moving the dance a week later. This would prevent any student trying to “test the system” from graduating.

“I absolutely think there’s a one-to-one correlation between having Day at the Bay on a minimum day and then Quad Dance,” McGuire said.

Some believe, however, that such a decision would hurt the majority in pursuit of punishing the minority.

But either way, Milburn said, the lesson needs to be learned.

“Why risk something at the very end, something you’ve looked forward to?” she said. “For me, it was really heartbreaking to see parents coming in with disappointed faces.”