Senior may be banned from graduation for clever yearbook joke
A Georgia teen slated to graduate next week may be banned from walking across the stage after a yearbook prank.
Paris Gray, senior class vice president, member of SADD, the Beta Club, and a leader on campus, says she received an in-school suspension for a science prank she pulled.
“I think their reaction was beyond what it should have been because nobody understood it,” said Paris Gray. […] [Gray] was kept from participating in a senior walk last Friday after yearbooks were distrubuted, all due to a quote she left near her portrait.
The message was: “When the going gets tough just remember to Barium, Carbon, Potassium, Thorium, Astatine, Arsenic, Sulfur, Uranium, Phosphorus.”
Gray tells Channel 2’s Carl Willis the message wasn’t flagged by any editors or adults.
Friday, administrators learned that by using periodic table the elements spelled “To back that as_ up.”
“My first reaction was, you are such a nerd,” said Gray’s mother Zarinah Woods.
“Basically, it was me just saying start all over again,” said Gray. “You have to go back and start all over.”
Administrators had a different interpretation. Gray was kept from participating in the senior walk and she will no longer give the inspirational speech at graduation.
A school district spokesperson says that no decision has been made and that the area superintendent and the principal would meet with Gray’s mother Tuesday morning.
Are school administrators blowing this prank out of proportion?
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