Seniors at FHS are not being recognized enough. At FHS, seniors are not allowed to decorate their graduation caps and parking spaces. Decorating your parking space for the year gives students an opportunity to engage with one another and something fun to do here at school. When students decorate their parking space, it makes the school look more fun and engaging and shows that the school is a welcoming and fun environment for students. Decorating your graduation cap gives students an opportunity to show off their personalities and adds something to their graduation regalia. In college you can decorate your cap, but why not in high school?
Some schools want to prevent any inappropriate images or messages on the caps. Checking each and every cap would be a hassle for staff, especially if the message is inappropriate. “We consider the graduation ceremony at Fauquier a dignified and orderly ceremony. Because of that, we like to keep everything the same. We don’t allow the decorating of the caps because that adds another layer that we have to monitor,” Assistant Principal Diana Story said.
Some schools have restrictions on what you should and shouldn’t put onto your cap, like “all decorations must be flat and cannot exceed the size of the cap. No profanity, inappropriate images, symbols or words will be allowed”, according to a policy at Stone Bridge High School in Loudoun County.
Some schools don’t allow anything that makes noise like bells or whistles or anything that dangles from the cap. If FHS puts these restrictions in place, students should be able to decorate their graduation caps to show a little bit of personality and creativity.
“It doesn’t hurt for students to be creative. There is a time and place for everything and at Fauquier we feel that the time and place is not for our graduation and we want everything to be traditional, very grounded and have a lot of continuity to it,” Story said. When graduating high school this is a big deal for seniors. When you’re decorating your cap, as long as there are some rules in place it should be okay to decorate. This would be a great time and place for students to get creative. Graduation is a fun and exciting time for seniors, so not being able to decorate your cap is frustrating for students.
Similarly, senior decorations of parking spaces would have to be school appropriate. The school has only recently done chalk, not paint. Story said, “The parking spaces we have done before, but we can only chalk them. There are other schools that do it and allow it. We just have never been able to get permission to allow the students, except for chalking the spot.” There should be a way for the school to get permission.
One year, FHS did a “chalk-your-spot” fundraiser. This helped raise money for the SCA and buy the chalk. “Painting your parking spot is something that we can always revisit, ” Story said. “Some students may not be able to do it because of the cost.” However, seniors are already paying for parking spaces for the school year in the parking lot. If seniors can pay for their spots, they should be able to paint their spots, within reason. Painting your spot can be an option for students. Students over the summer can fill out a Google form seeing if seniors want to paint their parking space. This can give an indication of how many students want to paint their parking space. Students can pay a certain amount of money along with the cost of the parking space and this can help pay for the supplies to paint their spot.
Seniors being allowed to decorate parking spaces and graduation caps could be an option for the future, but as of right now, it doesn’t seem like an option for students.
