The Purple Sweater Controversy

The purple sweater controversy as I like to call it has been the talk of the school this week. Being the last school picture day that the junior class will ever get to experience, some students decided to "jazz it up a bit." In what everyone thought would be a fun, hilarious and most importantly harmless "game/prank," the passing of the purple sweater soon became controversy that people were not going to let go.

The background behind this story is as follows. A large group of guys decided it would be fun to pass a funny-looking-turtleneck-purple sweater to each other throughout the day. Once they got their picture taken with this crazy piece of clothing, they passed it on to a friend an so on . The humor of this will then be remembered when the yearbooks are distributed. Throughout the junior class section, 50 guys would be wearing a funny-looking-turtleneck-purple sweater.

As far as I am told, the students got away with this through first and second hour. Once third hour was reached, the photographers seemed to have a problem with the passing of the purple sweater. I witnessed a kid going to the office to try and get backup from the administration. My question was "Why do the photographers care?" One thought would be that, parents would probably be less likely to buy the picture if their child looked that ridiculous. But that cannot be the case because the photos must be payed for ahead of time.

Much to everyone's surprise, the administration at school had an issue with the passing of the purple sweater as well. I think everyone just wanted to know why anyone cared. It is just a funny, harmless prank that people will remember forever when looking back at their yearbook photo.

Understandably, a few students got a bit frustrated with the photographers and secretaries when they told them to take the sweater off. Yes, no student should talk back to an adult, but the whole situation doesn't make any sense. The only thing that I could come up with, after asking my dad (employee of the school), is that the administration didn't want to get some sort of tradition started because sooner or later it will get out of hand.

Whatever the case may be, at least many students made a statement today by wearing purple!