Though sophomores took to the quad steps at lunch on Sept. 28 for their annual Homecoming quad day, they were disqualified soon after their lunchtime performance for using inappropriate jokes that targeted individuals, according to administrators.
Many upperclassmen were particularly surprised at the severity of jokes in the sophomore class’s script. Having experienced quad day for three years now, senior class president Nicole Shadman was shocked at the conduct of some participants.
“Not only did they specifically target a bunch of people in their quad day, they made fun of the anti-bullying assembly that the administration had specifically initiated to help solve their bullying problem,” Shadman said. “It was obvious that people got hurt. They brought up a bunch of really inappropriate things.”
Junior class president Benedict Chiu, too, expressed his disappointment.
“I thought the sophomores would do great. Their dance last year as freshmen wasn’t bad at all, and I heard they’d put a lot of time into rehearsing this year,” Chiu said. “I had no idea they would put on such a quad day that would misrepresent Saratoga ideals.”
As a consequence of the inappropriate jokes from the performance, the administration clamped down heavily on the scripts of the junior and senior classes in the following two days. A significant number of edits had to be made to the upperclassmen scripts, watering much of the humor down, class officers said.
“It was disappointing that an activity intended to be fun became so heavily regulated,” Chiu said. “But things were taken too far, and it was definitely not OK for jokes like that to be made [by the sophomores].”
Assistant principal Karen Hyde had reviewed the sophomores’ script for the skit and had advised the class officers to remove jokes from it that showed bullying. At the last moment, however, some students decided to ignore what they had been told and re-added the inappropriate parts and put in still other inappropriate material.
Assistant principal Kevin Mount, too, felt that the humor in the sophomores’ quad day skit went too far.
“I think there’s a marked difference between a lighthearted joke and just being mean, and some of the things said were flat-out mean,” Mount said. “And they were meant to be mean. That’s what bothers me the most.”
As a result of the incident, guidance counselors called parents of the instigators. As of Sept. 30, it was unclear what the punishment for the students would be.
Many sophomores felt that the inappropriate jokes in the quad day were a misleading representation of the class as a whole. According to several class officers, only a handful of students had any voice in the script at all, and the vast majority of the class were completely unaware of its crudity.
“One domineering group took charge of the entire script, and I think most of the class really wishes they hadn’t,” said sophomore Gloria Breck, who participated in one of the quad day dances. “A lot of sophomores feel really ashamed of their class right now, but I think it’s a good lesson for us.”
Despite the disappointing performance this year, Breck is optimistic for the future of her class’s quad days. Ultimately, she feels that things can only go uphill for the sophomore class.
“Now that our reputation has hit an all-time low, we have to learn how to build it back up together,” Breck said. “And even though things didn’t turn out well, I was happy that we had a lot more participation this year. We’re going to try to break out of the mold that everyone fits the sophomore class into.”