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.
The other girls boyfriend found me and tossed me and my rented tuxedo through a plate glass window in the square. I got away becaue my cousin punched him out.
Later, after the prom, and my girl disappeared, one of my friends smashed out a motel room door, and shot everyone with a fire extinguisher. Another friend was throwing bud tall (bottles) through the windows.
As I was discreetly leaving the scene of these crimes, the guy who threw my butt through the window earlier caught me in the parking lot and kicked the crap out of me. Then he tossed me down a hill.
I paid for the Tuxedo, Harvard paid for the stitches.
This reminds me of one of our high school capers. A bunch of us started using the phrase “Get Off Me” to excess. We would say it when someone stood too close, said something negative, etc.
Our calculus teacher did not like the phrase and BANNED it from being used in her classroom, so my friend climbed out on the balcony across the quadrangle from her classroom and wrote out “Get Off Me!” using masking tape.
It was taken down the next day, but we howled with laughter the rest of the year.
You know, if a lesbian had done this to ask another lesbian...
It would have been hailed as sweet and romantic. They would have been made the Queen and Queen of the prom.
(puke)
Kinda like buying jean shorts that are frayed like they were cut off. Just not the same as the real deal... (uh, I mean, back when cut-offs were cool, of course)
Wow! Hell of good time, huh?
(Ahh, sweet memories of high school daze)
I think the school acted mindlessly. The guy did something that would have taken 5 minutes to clean up, with no damage.
I do keep in mind that this is the age where the permanently harm a grade three’s scholastic record over brining a plast fork to school or some kid who defended himself or somebody who needed defending.
I knew one of the sheep who believe holy rules are sacrosanct would show up to baaaaa.
Upset no one asked you to your prom, are ya?
In the late ‘60’s, a group of students diss-assembled a VW beetle. They then carried it into the auditorium and re-assembled it on the stage. All done in the dark of one night.
Some kids from auto shop volunteered to remove same VW the next day. Somehow they just happened to have the right tools to do the job. (metric wrenches were rare in those days)
We got screwed out of our senior activities week because someone spray painted on the gym door, and it wasn’t even a senior. Teachers are sad cases that exercise power trips in their little fishbowls every time they get a chance. Small towns are the worst.
Sweet indeed.
I was allowed to take the girlfriend to the senior prom. We never went in, just humped for four hours in a Dodge dart in the parking lot.
The irony is that today, she hates me and my wife... And my wife hates her.. And her father now thinks the world of me.
She was literally the girl next door. I would hop her again in a moment, but my wife would shoot both of us. It is a strange world.
Now, now we can’t go blaming people for things without proof.
We should just be thankful that many teens like to do nice things like undoing pranks.
Nudity does not bother me so much as it does my neighbors.
I sometimes forget clothing.
Peevs the wife too.
Shame in presentation of form is natural to most people, but not all. It is hard to understand this thing, but nudity is the natural state of man.
Probably.
That's how a lot of relationships that result in happy marriages start out.
Safety and Enviromentalism will be the death of freedom.
We never went in, just humped for four hours in a Dodge dart in the parking lot.
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