By Sam Adams

A proposed senior class “Ditch Day” for Monday April 20 did not come to fruition after a public Facebook event for the day was seen by members of the administration. An email sent to the class reiterated school policy that if a student does not attend all academic obligations, he or she cannot participate in any after school extracurricular activities.

Still, some seniors skipped school on Monday, Tuesday or both.

“I slept in until 11, went to breakfast with a few of my friends, then met a bunch of seniors at the beach,” one senior who participated in the ditch day said. “We played football in the water, beach volleyball, and just laid around. Then we went to an early dinner and all went home.”

Taking place on a day in which members of the Playwright’s Festival, Peer Support and spring season sports teams had significant obligations, the day chosen for the informal tradition was especially poor, upper school dean Vanna Cairns said.

In addition, an AP Art History exam was scheduled for the day, with teachers threatening to give zeroes to any students with unexcused absences.

“Officially, the administration is never going to sanction a ditch day,” Cairns said. “That being said, if the seniors wanted to have such a day for bonding or for whatever reason, it would be better for them to choose a day maybe after APs. The concept of a senior Ditch Day doesn’t have to be adversarial with the administration.”

Few students actually ditched school on the day or the following day, Attendance Coordinator Gabriel Preciado said.

“If they want to do it, that’s fine. They just need to know the repercussions involved,” Preciado said. “It’s a day of rebellion for them, against school and school activities, for them to go out and do something other than sitting and getting an academic workload.”

The ones who did partake in the festivities received detentions that they are schetuled to serve on May 1, but that did not faze the revelers.

“The only repercussion of having a wonderful Ditch Day with all my friends is spending an hour in detention with those same great people,” the same senior said. “Actually, we are looking forward to this detention. We are working on a funny theme for it.”

However, a Ditch Day creates extra work for Preciado, who must separate ditching students from those with legitimate excuses.

“Sometimes we have to weed out those students who are legitimately ill or had a doctor’s appointment versus those whose parents just gave us that as an excuse,” Preciado said. “We like them to have their fun but we can’t just take an easy stand on it because if we do, what’s wrong with two ditch days? What’s wrong with three, four, five? The list goes on.”