Going off campus for lunch. Senior shirts. Senior sunrise. All traditions and privileges that underclassmen look forward to throughout their time in Upper School, waiting until it is their turn as seniors. But in recent years, the attitude towards these traditions and privileges has shifted. These once-coveted privileges have become something seniors can no longer take for granted.
“I do think that seniors seemed to have more privileges when we were younger,” senior Diya Cadambe said.
While some traditions and privileges have endured, others have disappeared or been restricted, such as Senior Haunted Halloween and painting senior parking spots, leading seniors to wonder if their “seniority” is in question.
From our perspective, these privileges represent more than just perks – they symbolize the freedom and respect that should come with the last year of high school. The slow erosion of them feels like losing what makes senior year special.
“I saw privileges as a way to give freedom to the seniors. I feel like now there are more restrictions on what privileges are available to us,” Cadambe said. “That said, I’m still grateful for the ones we do have.”
But here’s the problem: those privileges are treated as rewards that can very easily be taken away. Rather than the rite of passage that we believed they were, they’ve become tools for control and a method for collective punishment, unfairly making us feel as though we’re walking on eggshells to avoid punishment for minor issues. As a result, seniors are held to a much stricter, and possibly unfair, standard than their peers.
It’s frustrating, especially because we’ve spent so many years looking forward to these traditions. Now, it seems that every year we watch them slip away just as we finally earn them. It makes us question whether senior privileges are being recognized as they should be.
“The act of using these senior privileges as a bargaining chip takes away from the attractiveness of it. It makes it seem like they are a reward for good behavior rather than a recognition for reaching senior year,” Cadambe said. “Many of us are already adults so it seems only natural to leave campus during our free time.”
As a senior, I feel like we’ve earned these privileges through the years of work, stress and growth it took to reach this point. Yet, the gradual reduction in our freedoms leaves me wondering whether we’re truly being given the space to enjoy our final year. Traditions aren’t just fun – they help us bond as a class and remind us of what it means to be a part of this school community. Without them, senior year feels incomplete.
It’s not just about losing the painted parking spots or haunted houses – it’s about losing the sense of recognition and responsibility that should come with being a senior. We deserve to enjoy these final moments, not feel like we’re constantly fighting to keep the privileges we’ve waited for.
According to Jordan Innerarity, Dean of Students, senior privileges and traditions are given or taken away based on a variety of factors, such as student safety, behavior and the senior class’s choice.
“Student safety always comes first,” Innerarity said. “When a tradition is bucking up against student safety and putting students at risk, that’s when we have to question it and take it away or try to make it safer.”
One example of this is senior Halloween. In past years, seniors have put on a haunted house for underclassmen in Hicks, but the tradition was stopped last year.
“While the Halloween tradition happened there were a lot of problems with what it was about and liability risks occurred,” Innerarity said. “While it seemed like it was a fun tradition, the tradition had several problems that needed to be addressed, and it wasn’t executed by the senior class as best as possible.”
Other traditions, such as letting seniors paint their parking spots, were stopped after the cost turned out to be too great. However, as a result, the seniors got the senior commons, a space dedicated just to them.
“My second year here is when y’all got the senior commons,” Innerarity said. “That is when seniors used to be able to paint the parking lot with whatever they wanted to, and that got taken away because of how expensive it was. People were using oil-based paints, and they were not coming up, so we would have to repave the lot every year.”
However, seniors currently have several traditions and privileges and have received them faster than in previous years.
“This class has gotten them earlier than classes from when I first started,” Innerarity said. “Most of the senior privileges besides parking used to usually happen in late spring”
According to Innerarity, gaining senior privileges is based on trust and whether the administration believes that the seniors will abide by the rules.
“It’s a huge risk and liability for us to let y’all go off campus for lunch and other times, so it’s demonstrating that we can trust the seniors to do that and abide by the rules,” Innerarity said.
Each senior class is also able to produce their own traditions and privileges and pitch them to administration, which allows them to form their own identity as a class.
“I think the cool part of how we do privileges now is your student reps ask and petition for what they want,” Innerarity said. “It’s kind of open to every senior class to ask for what privileges they want.”
In the past, some traditions have looked different, but others have stayed the same.
“When I was a student, only seniors dressed up for Halloween and it was kind of a privilege just for them,” Landice Elliot Fox’92 said. “But a lot of traditions like ring day and off campus lunch are still the same.”
