Senior skip day has been a tradition in American schools since the 1930’s. Senior skip days are specific days agreed upon by the majority of the senior class where you skip school, as the name “senior skip day” suggests.  Some see it as a reward for going through the whole kindergarten to 12th grade schooling process, others see it as an extra day to their vacation. The skip days are something to look forward to as a senior.  

I have been looking forward to the occasion ever since I arrived at Barnstable High School in 2018. There is always some bad news with the good news; unfortunately, these skip days count as unexcused absences and this is not ideal for student athletes. Student athletes are not able to participate in games if they do not have an excused absence or early dismissal. For many senior student athletes this is awful. Not only do they have to stay in school to be able to play in their sports games, but they miss out on a senior right of passage that most spend years looking forward to. Depending on how many days they skip this year, students who participate in the tradition could miss out on up to 10 hours of each class. 

If the classes are senior based classes, it could hold up the curriculum and they could be behind by the end of the year; If this does happen they will just be putting more of a work load on themselves. Some schools have put a limit to the amount of times seniors are allowed to skip each year, and some schools have banned it altogether.  Even though there are several drawbacks of senior skip day, I feel that a few days should be forgiven for the senior class to enjoy some much earned time off. Once a month seems like a reasonable amount of times that seniors should be able to skip. Instead of organizing a plan with the whole senior class, seniors seem to do it amongst their friend groups. Maybe in the future there could be a way that the student body could collaborate with the school system and plan out specific days the seniors can take off.  This could allow seniors that participate in sports to be included while not being punished for having unexcused absences.