We noticed a plethora of empty seats in our senior populated classes last Friday morning. In fact, we’d have to say that as much as half the senior class was gone. This wasn’t some scene from “Outbreak” though. It was senior ditch day.

Although senior ditch day is typically toward the end of the year, the Senior Class of 2014 decided that the day after Halloween would be suitable because it would be unexpected, and it would allow students the opportunity for a fun Halloween night.

Even though we could care less about the ditch day itself (if you want to make up the work, fine by us), we found it sad that parents called out the vast majority of ditches. The idea of ditch day is to be rebellious, and the purpose is to do something crazy as a class bonding experience before graduation. That includes the Saturday detention. It feels as if the ditch day was simply a mere cop out.

Furthermore, teachers who were unaware about the ditch day were thrown off-guard and often ended up having to rearrange their lesson plans. We find this a bit discourteous to teachers, many of whom had gone to the effort of planning guest speakers or labs or tests that day. Some students even came to school to find out that their tests had been rescheduled.

“There were a lot of people who only came to school to take tests. But then teachers reschedule[d] them, so students who came couldn’t take the test, which was annoying because they’d planned on taking that test,” said Nikhl Mathews, senior.

This is the main reason we believe that ditch day should be toward the end of the year because coursework begins to wind down. It is not fair to  teachers or students who don’t ditch to have to rearrange their schedules so that other students can have a day off.

Despite these complaints, there were some perks to coming to school on Friday. First of all, it put you on your teachers’ good side, sometimes so much so that they would reward you with extra credit, candy, an easier test, or a partner test. More importantly though, the smaller class sizes make the day more laid back and allow for more interesting classes.

“The small class sizes allowed us to expand and further our discussions,” said Mr. Brian Mitchell, AP Economics teacher.

We definitely noticed this. Without as many students, teachers were able to go through material and answer questions faster, allowing time for interesting but slightly off topic class discussions.

So seniors, if another ditch day is in the works, we suggest making it on a day where nothing big is going on in school so that those that those who choose to ditch and those who don’t can both have the best experience.