The scene before school every morning is that of a line of cars and buses making their way to the building. The crowded road can be rather overwhelming, especially on the one day every year when the Seniors participate in their annual “parade”. The term “parade” is being used loosely, as it is more of a traffic jam.

The senior parade started out as a prank in 2014. The seniors would drive as slow as possible while screaming and honking their horns, making everyone late to school. In all honesty, the prank was not clever and just aggravated people. Maybe it was a little amusing at first but it surely was not great enough to be dragged on so long.

It has been three years and the ‘prank’ has now turned into a tradition, as it happened again last year and will probably happen a third time this year. The seniors line up some time before the end of the year, and stop traffic to make students and parents late. The continuation of this joke can be mildly understandable due to the fact that a lot of pressure has been put on students the past four years and now they are expected to decide on a career at the young ages of eighteen and seventeen.This is the senior’s last real fun before they have to graduate and do responsible things like going into debt at college. Despite this, there are people trying to get to work or drop of their children and this prank could cause trouble in their workplace. Even some students have to get into school early, maybe to retake a test or do tutoring, and the parade makes it hard for them to get there on time due to how crowded it is. The bus routes are also affected because the parade causes the buses to be late picking up younger students.

Not only that, but the tradition seems to have taken the place of a classical senior prank. Instead of coming up with a creative and fun prank, the seniors (the ones who can drive and have their own car) just cause a traffic jam. It seems as though the class of 2014 has taken away from the seniors behind them the freedom of choosing their own prank. Now students only have the choice to follow behind those who think the parade is great or to become cynical of the idea with no real way of stopping it and without being criticized by fellow seniors for ruining the fun for others.

The parade is not promoted by the school, even if the district wanted to, it would not be able to due to how it blocks traffic. This means that the parade is actually illegal because they do not have a permit and every year students are arrested. That being the case, maybe it would be better if the seniors could coordinate with the police, that way there would be a bit more organization to it. Also, the parade can be a bit dangerous. With students hanging out their car windows and on truck beds, if an accident were to occur it could be quite harmful. It would be a much easier matter to support if the seniors stopped the honking and hanging out of car windows once they got on traffic, just to be on the safe side.

In the end, the fun of a few does not benefit very many. Although the parade is considered a sort of rite of passage, it seems as though it would be a lot more fun to have a variety of pranks every year.