The Most Successful Senior Skip Day on Record

Photo by Ruby Champagne

In a demonstration of unity and pride for their class, the 2021 seniors organized the most successful Senior Skip Day on record this past Wednesday. Nearly 100% of the senior class was reported to have been out of the building for the duration of that school day. Actually, if we are being precise, 99.6% of the senior class. Tyler Aitken was reportedly informed of the Senior Skip Day, but decided to attend school anyway “as a matter of principle.”

This is the highest participation that Senior Skip Day has ever seen at J-DHS. The seniors we interviewed said they were very proud of the way their class came together in these trying times. “It was truly a moment of unity and celebrating how far we have come,” attested senior Francesca Chirco. 

The seniors celebrated the skip day by waking up at 1 pm, changing from pajamas into sweatpants, traversing from their bedrooms to the couch, and watching Netflix for the remainder of the day. “The experience was empowering,” Chirco added.

In fact, the Senior Skip Day was even more successful than many thought possible. After revisiting the numbers, Yampage determined that the entire student population seemed to participate in the skip. “We wanted to show our support for the seniors we look up to so much,” reported sophomore Mark Bratslavsky when asked to explain why underclassmen like himself skipped school on Wednesday. Following our interview, Bratslavsky retired for his second afternoon nap — which was in honor of Shamus Endries, his favorite senior, of course. 

Unfortunately, the work seemed to go unnoticed and unrecognized by teachers and administration alike. We interviewed several faculty members after the skip day, and received far less positive feedback than anticipated. 

Mr. May called the skip day “lazy and completely uncalled for” as well as “a waste of taxpayer money” (or perhaps he was referring to the seniors themselves — we couldn’t be sure), and many of the staff members had no idea that the event even occurred. Mr. Cottet, for one, simply accepted that students were no longer attending his class. Ms. Breck, fumbling through her attendance sheets, muttered “I’m sure they were here…” while Mr. Gasparini repeatedly insisted that our statistics were faulty. “It is impossible. These kids love coming to school. The blood of the Ram flows within them — besides, have I ever told you that this is the best senior class in the world? It’s true. António Guterres told me personally.” 

Despite our efforts to convince him that Senior Skip Day did indeed take place (via the use of several expert-cited statistics, government-produced diagrams, and websites ending in .edu or .org), Gasparini was in denial. Even our argumentative essay, which was thoroughly reviewed and received high grades from the entire English department — including Mr. DeChick — failed to persuade him. To be fair, it did have some issues with comma splicing.

Still, while Gasparini and most of the J-DHS faculty refuse to admit the success of Senior Skip Day, there is no doubt in the minds of the students that it will go down in J-D history. At least, they think so. Most have been skipping class, so they don’t know how history really works anyway. 

Agatha Smoot
Agatha Smoot is an elite butter churner from Willow Canyon, Arizona. After 57 years of butter churning, she found the career had become too intense to continue full time and decided to pursue other passions. Smoot packed her bags and moved to Jamesville, New York in 2017 for the sole purpose of starting a career at Yampage. Since then, she has dedicated herself to providing the best, juiciest, and most accurate stories of the happenings at JD High School, though she continues to participate in butter-churning competitions on the weekends. Her other hobbies include candle making, scarf knitting, whittling, and hot yoga. Rumor has it, Smoot lives deep inside the unused locker of Emily Ninestein (‘21) and will only respond to Xtra Cheddar Goldfish or acapella performances of Bohemian Rhapsody.