Posted on 05/11/2011 12:02:41 PM PDT by Responsibility2nd
SHELTON -- It began as a simple gesture. Shelton High School senior James Tate just wanted to make his good friend, Sonali Rodrigues, feel special.
So instead of the usual way of asking her to the senior prom, Tate and two friends went to the high school campus in the middle of the night and posted 12-inch tall, cardboard letters on the outside of the building -- at the main entrance.
The message that many saw when they arrived to school Friday, read: "Sonali Rodrigues, Will you go to prom with me? HMU Tate."
She said yes.
"It took a lot of effort," said Tate.
He posted the letters, one at a time, in a "safe and thoughtful way" to avoid trouble.
But, it appears, that didn't work out.
Because of what he did, Tate can't go to the prom.
Tuesday, after meeting with his headmaster, Tate and his two friends were each given one-day, in-house suspensions and banned from the prom. Tate was told the administration felt what they did was a safety risk.
But the teen said he took every precaution when he posted the message early Friday, sometime between 1 and 3 a.m.
"I had one friend hold the ladder while the other put double-sided tape on the letters," he said. Tate said he also wore a helmet.
He was told another reason for the suspensions was that they trespassed on school grounds.
"I didn't enter the school at all," he said. And while the front gates to the school were locked, Tate said he and his friends were able to get onto the grounds on a footpath.
Tate said that, according to school regulations, if you get suspended after April 1, you can't go to the prom.
"I tried to appeal -- tried to just get a detention instead," he said. "I even offered to do community service -- like cleaning up the litter outside the school."
But he said nothing worked.
"Now I have a date for the prom, but can't go," he said.
"This is ridiculous," said Rodrigues. "James is one of my best friends and we are both good kids who never got in trouble. I've never been to the principal's office except to get an award."
Rodrigues was also called to the headmaster's office Tuesday morning. "They just asked me some questions, like would I still go to the prom if James couldn't," she said.
She will go, with a girlfriend, whose boyfriend has also been suspended for an unrelated incident.
"This is really upsetting," she said. "It's our senior year and we are supposed to have happy memories, not something like this."
Shelton High School Headmaster Beth Smith did not return calls for comment Tuesday. Superintendent Freeman Burr declined comment, referring all questions to Smith.
Anne M. Amato can be reached at 203-330-6496 or at aamato@ctpost.com.
Since school officials didn’t see them in action, how do they know that it was done unsafely? And, BTW - Do they punish all creativity at this school?
LOL
Vandalism is in the eye of the beholder......
Take your girl on a date and avoid the whole “drunken teen dies in prom night accident” gig.
Sounds like the future plotline to Footloose III.
I wonder if the kid has sold his movie rights?
"Did you really think we want those laws observed?" said Dr. Ferris. "We want them to be broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against... We're after power and we mean it... There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals.Well, when there aren't enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now that's the system, Mr. Reardon, that's the game, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with." (Atlas Shrugged 1957)
That's usually reserved for after-prom activities.
Y’know school administrators could construe just about anything as a “safety risk” nowadays.
This is ridiculous.
Does this kid think rules do not apply to him? For future reference, if it is after hours and the gate is locked, maybe you shouldn’t go tape letters on the side of the building.
Being IN a PUBLIC SKOOL....is a SAFETY RISK, these days.
Geez.
A generation ago, nothing would have become of this.
He would have been required to clean up his mess and that was that.
The school would look so cool if every student bypassed the locked gate and did this.
I wonder what would happen if they showed up anyway ... I guess they’d likely be expelled. What a brain dead world we live in.
I can see some punishment being meted out - detention, service, etc. as the kid suggested. What a bunch of humorless tyrants.
Maybe they should stage a counter-prom.
You're bad Joe.
Real bad.
Maybe they’re allergic to lawsuits. That’s usually the reason for these silly “zero tolerance” rules. When I was going to high school, the exterior of the building was never off limits so long as no vandalism was taking place — how times change. Anyhow, if the letters were put up with no-trace tape, and as easily removed, it’s hard to see how it could even be called vandalism. A principal of my era would have winked with a warning over the P.A. not to repeat a stunt like that because “someone might get poison ivy.”
Looking at this, I am pretty sure this is a case of her thinking “we’re just friends, he’s nice...but...” and him thinking “I am SO in love with her and if I could just...”
Ok, it has to be said - if he’d asked another boy to the prom, no one would have been suspended from the prom.
Decisions like this are what is giving public schools a bad name. Ok, sure, if he’d fallen and was injured his parents would have sued the school for everything they had. Is there a law stating that school grounds are off limits past X hour? There can’t be what with kids coming in at all hours of the day and night from out of town activities. It’s a public school so I can’t see where he’d be tresspassing. The only thing he did wrong was behaving like a dumb kid. With his parents’ strong community ties, the principal may be wishing she’d not gone so overboard when her contract isn’t renewed.
They punish creativity at every government school. They want conformity, not creativity.
“A generation ago, nothing would have become of this.”
They wrote songs about this type of stuff happening a generation ago. Anyone remember this?
They were farm kids way down in Dixie
They met in high school in the sixties
Everyone knew it was love from the start
One July in the midnight hour
He climed up on the water tower
Stood on the rail and painted a 10ft heart
In John Deere green
On a hot summer night
He wrote Billy Bob loves Charlene
In letters 3 foot high
And the whole town said that he should have used red
But it looked good to Charlene
In John Deere green
The song’s eighteen years old — about the age of a high school senior.
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