Senior skip days might just be the greatest senior year tradition, but this year, our school’s senior class is off to a rocky start. Having three alleged skip days already this year, it is unclear how many “official” skip days seniors have attempted to orchestrate. This goes to show that the guidelines of this senior tradition are rather blurry. The lack of information and organization is getting out of hand, leaving room for many to take advantage.
It was originally thought that students had to verify organized skip days with administrators. Senior Assistant Principal Laura Porter reported a different reality.
“There are zero “official” senior skip days…It’s not a thing. Legally we couldn’t make it a thing,” Porter said.
Senior skip days are not excused absences, and they never have been. It is up to students and their families to excuse their absences.
Porter noted that because of talk of so many skip days, administrators have to tell students they need to show medical documentation in order to excuse absences when there’s talk of a skip day. This system weeds out bad excuses for missed classes and scares students from taking advantage of another skip day, but what happens when this doesn’t apply to a case of absence?
“On a regular day we would have no reason to question a doctors appointment, but if we had reason to believe there’s a senior skip day and parents are trying to provide non-legitimate excuses then we would try to verify them. We wouldn’t want to preclude anyone from having a doctor’s appointment or anything like that but it’s pretty easy to request a note and get that verified,” school principal Kevin Clark said.
While asking for documentation might catch a bad excuse of a fake doctors appointment, there are bound to be students out of town, sick at home or another reason that might be difficult to provide documentation for. Clark assured that requests for documentation don’t apply to every case of absence. In other words, if the absence is legitimate then students shouldn’t worry. If the absence is not legitimate though then students should take note that using a “doctors appointment” is not an original excuse.
Porter and Clark agree that the tradition is being taken advantage of, but it’s still worth preserving.
“It’s a fun tradition when it’s a one time experience, but if you had five proms would you be excited to go to the prom? The more senior skip days people are creating is making it less special. It’s not a senior skip day. You’re just deciding not to come to school,” Porter said.
Students have transcended the idea of a senior skip day to justify skipping school on a multi-day basis. In that case, everyday is a senior skip day.
“There needs to be one or two. That’s what makes people commit to it because if we have three or four possible skip days in the first quarter or even the first semester it’s not as impactful and not everyone does it,” senior Allie Bass said.
When there’s so many skip days, it doesn’t live up to its name. It’s just not the same.
Some students got straight to business this year, advocating for a senior skip day on Halloween at the end of the first quarter. This would maximize time off to add a skip day to a county-wide five day weekend, creating a six day weekend. To be clear, that is longer than our Thanksgiving break. Is this genius or inefficient?
“That was in my opinion a little much because it was in advance of a five-day weekend already. I was like ‘that’s ridiculous,’” Clark said.
On the other hand, some students would have preferred to save their senior skip day for a dreaded five day week where the senioritis is especially hard hitting, such as one during the dreaded third quarter.
“Doing one in October or November is just not smart because we have so much time off from school already. We need to do it in February or March when we have weeks after weeks of five day school weeks,” senior Alaina Desautels said.
The unfortunate reality at hand is that the more senior skip days there are, the less excitement there is in participating in this tradition. At this rate, the anticipation of a senior skip day will equal that of any old Friday.
