MONROVIA – It was supposed to be in good fun.
But the “senior prank” some Monrovia High varsity cheerleaders played on underclassmen at an August cheer camp resulted in personal items strewn outside, a couple of mattresses flung over balconies and at least two of the underclassmen in tears.
School and district officials told parents the incident was hazing. Ten varsity cheerleaders and one mascot were expelled from the cheer team, all 11 girls were suspended the first two days of school, and they lost their senior privileges, such as attending last Friday’s Homecoming game and dressing up for Halloween.
Several parents of the seniors have pushed back at recent school board meetings, arguing that MHS Principal Darvin Jackson’s punishment was too severe.
“It’s like jaywalking and getting the death penalty,” said parent Sharilyn Ochoa, whose daughter was among the punished cheerleaders. “It’s very harsh.”
Another mother of a punished senior, Laura Lara, said she transferred her daughter to another district because the teen’s morale was so low and she felt let down by her superiors.
Jackson declined to comment as did Monrovia Unified School District Superintendent Linda Wagner, who said she “cannot disclose the outcomes of student disciplinary issues.”
Several school board members said they support the principal’s decision.
“Once you break a rule, you really can’t pick what the consequences there are going to be,” said school board clerk Alex Zucco. “The senior privileges they can earn back with good behavior … That’s the one thing they can earn back.”
A district suspension notice given to parents stated their children had “engaged in, or attempted to engage in, hazing” and “disrupted school activities or otherwise willfully defied the valid authority of school personnel.”
District officials told parents the offending cheerleaders not only “put others in significant danger” when they dropped a large object from the third floor but violated their cheer and athletic code of conduct contracts.
Rob Hammond, a board member and former mayor, said while he agreed with the decision to expel the seniors from the team and suspend them for two days, he feels taking away the girls’ senior privileges was unnecessary.
“No one got hurt, and the lesson was taught by the first two consequences,” Hammond said. Suspending senior privileges “seems to be heavy handed and out of line with the crime … The punishment seems open ended. It needs a finite date to it.”
The 10 varsity cheerleaders and one mascot played the prank on about two dozen underclassmen who were on the school’s varsity and under-varsity cheer teams at a Universal Cheerleaders Association camp at UC Santa Barbara, according to several parents and a former cheerleader.
They said the new cheer coach, who was aware the girls were going to play a prank, handed over her backpack with most of the keys to the girls’ rooms at their private lodging facility near the campus and kept the underclassmen busy to give the seniors time to pull the prank. (Wagner told parents the coach, who board members say is no longer employed at the school, did not know they were going to engage in dangerous behavior.)
The seniors removed many of the underclassmen’s mattresses from their rooms, and some of their personal belongings including a girl’s undergarments, and put them outside. A few of the girls pushed two of the mattresses over their third-story balcony to the ground below.
One girl’s stuffed animal wound up on the floor and another girl’s makeup compact was broken, which brought the two affected girls to tears. Some seniors wrote “2013” on the rooms’ mirrors with lipstick, according to the parents and one of the cheerleaders.
The seniors cleaned up the mess promptly after cheer camp instructors told them to but were told the next day they could not participate in a final performance, said Samantha Ochoa, who is among the punished girls.
“We all know what we did is wrong; we understand someone could have gotten hurt,” she said. “We understand we should think things through before we do it. Yeah, we should get punished but just not to the severity that it was.”
Some students have indicated they’re concerned the incident might harm their chances of getting into college since some applications ask if they’ve ever been suspended.
Susan Lipkins, author of “Preventing Hazing: How Parents, Teachers, and Coaches Can Stop the Violence, Harassment, and Humiliation,” said hazing – unlike a prank – usually has to do with a differentiation in class, status, superiority or power and potentially causes either psychological or physical harm.
“It sounds like this meets that criteria,” Lipkins said. “It was a specific class, the older more powerful people did something to the younger, less powerful people.”
The board has not formally discussed the issue and is not expected to since it deals with policy matters, board member Ed Gilliland, who supports the principal’s decision, said.
“There’s a level of behavior that’s expected for our students and especially for our student leaders,” he said.
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