A hearing today will determine if Green River High School students caught in a senior prank will be able to walk in their graduation.
The hearing before Sweetwater County School District #2’s School Board will take place at noon today and is not open to the public. During the hearing, the board will provide time for the students to lay out a case of why they should be allowed to walk in graduation.
At this time, the students are not allowed to walk in their High School Graduation on Monday unless they win the hearing.
The Board is expected to make a decision by 5 p.m. tonight.
An online petition requesting that the board allow the students to walk has circulated around the community and raised awareness of the incident.
GRHS Senior Haley Lauze created the petition in hopes that it could help the boys’ chances of walking with their class in the ceremony.
Lauze says she was told by a parent that the boys only had a thirty percent chance of winning the hearing and walking in graduation, and she wanted to increase those odds.
Lauze initially wrote the petition with the intent of gaining senior support, but she quickly realized the petition would be far further reaching. The first signature came from a junior, followed soon by members of the community. As of 10 a.m. Friday, the petition has already received 675 signatures from people around Wyoming and in states like Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Texas, and New York.
The controversy stems from an attempted senior prank gone wrong.
According to Green River Police Chief Chris Steffen, the Green River Police Department was called to Green River High School at about 2:30 a.m. Monday and found that multiple male students were in the process of entering the school. Steffen says at least some of the students entered the school via a hatch on the roof and some students were still on the roof.
Police made contact with seven senior boys who said they were playing a senior prank. The boys said their intent was to write things like “Class of 2016” on the schools windows with dry erase markers and to place alarm clocks in the school to go off at 9 a.m. after school began. Six of the seven seniors police spoke with were legal adults and the other was 17 years old.
Steffen says the school principal was called to the scene and the decision was made not to press any criminal charges and to handle it as an internal matter.
Steffen added that while many people have criticized the punishment of those involved, he has been told the school made it “abundantly clear” to seniors that pranks would not be tolerated in any way and seniors were informed of potential punishments.
“Picture these kids getting on your roof at your home,” said Steffen. “Certainly you wouldn’t be okay with it.”
He says the students did not have permission to be on the school’s roof nor did they have permission to be in the school during those hours.
Representatives from the Green River High School would not comment on the incident.