Clark Chronicle

Senior ditch day has gone too far

Tuesday, May 19, 2009 By Chronicle staff

(March 26, 2004) -- Senior Ditch Day is a tradition so inscribed in high school legends that most probably couldn’t tell you when or how it began. But regardless of who started it or how it survived all these years, Senior Ditch Day has become a tradition that most of the senior class loves to take advantage of—sometimes too much. Ditch Day is a prominent festivity for seniors—an opportunity to take the day off from school, providing for an occasion only Ferris Bueller could rival. But the uniqueness of this event has greatly morphed over the years, slowly revealing that Senior Ditch Day could almost qualify as any other day for the casually-absent senior. This is where lines start to blur. Some view Senior Ditch Day as justified because it’s the one day that seniors get to take a legitimate day off without having to feign sickness or trudge through a museum field trip. But for many, who find awaking at 7 a.m. less than enticing in their fourth year of high school, ditching is becoming a practice so common that Senior Ditch Day becomes just another reason not to show up. This is why Senior Ditch Day is an abused tradition, undeserving to most and unattainable to those who cannot afford to miss school. It’s becoming that most everyone will take any chance to skip school, and adding Senior Ditch Day to their repertoire shines a bad light on those who’d like to sincerely and fairly take advantage of a one-time, one-day tradition. Each new senior class produces a list of Senior Ditch Days that are supposedly the “right day” to ditch given baffling equations and strange reasoning. Seniors, if you already took your ditch day, don’t take another. Students have enough excuses to get out of school and the senior class ought to be mature enough to realize that it’s called Ditch Day for a reason: it’s singular, not plural. Taking advantage of Ditch Day, on top of all the other occasions seniors find ditch-worthy, puts this tradition under the narrow eye of the administration and thus onto the endangered species list. Take some responsibility and use your ditch day fairly.