Graduating Mars Area senior Ava Santoro takes a selfie after receiving her diploma in 2022. Butler Eagle File Photo

ADAMS TWP — Board directors at Mars Area School District voted 7-2 at a meeting Tuesday, March 12, to defer seating arrangements for high school graduation to the graduation committee, overturning a previous decision requiring graduates to sit in alphabetical order.

The vote came after high school principal Lindsay Rosswog presented the school board with an update on graduation at the Mars Athletic Complex, and asked directors to reconsider the seating requirement so that students would have the option to sit with a group of friends.

In previous years, students had that option, she said.

“I sat next to my husband at my high school graduation from Mars, and I remember that because we got to pick who we sat next to, and we were dating then,” Rosswog said. “It is a memory that some of these students will have. If they don’t want to, there’s no pressure to force kids to sit next to anybody.”

“I know part of this was moving to a traditional ceremony at the (Mars Athletic Complex) and sitting in ABC order is traditional and this might seem untraditional,” she said. “But for Mars, this has been the tradition.”

To sit with their friends, Rosswog said seniors would have to provide a names of six other classmates they would want to sit with. The other six would also have to agree to sit together.

Students who don’t meet the deadline to sit with six others or choose not to participate would have an assigned place to sit in a group of students, Rosswog said.

Board member Kevin Hagen, who voted against the motion with board president John Kennedy, said the alphabetical order arrangement would have eliminated the possibility of students feeling left out.

He said the board received emails from parents concerned students would feel excluded.

“One of the only comments I got about the parking lot graduation, as a complaint, was that … it wasn’t alphabetical. There were pockets of students that felt left out,” he said. “You’d still have that dynamic under this situation.”

“I’ve also heard anecdotally that there were some (students) that thought they were in particular groups that were left out of a particular group, and they didn’t realize until the seating chart came out,” Hagen said. “The alphabet’s alphabetical. You don’t have to worry about it. There’s no additional work.”

Hagen added the change in venue from the parking lot to the athletic complex, which was approved in January, would have been “an opportune time to switch” to a formalized alphabetical order requirement.

Although sitting with a group of friends would not be mandatory, board member Sallie Wick said students could feel pressure to do so.

“It’s hard for kids, because even if they don’t have to send a group (of names), they feel pressured to, or there are kids that are getting left out because they don’t have six (friends),” Wick said. “Those are just some of the things I’ve heard as well. It is nice to have a group of friends. I see both sides of it.”

Wick, along with board members Anthony DePretis and Lee Ann Riner, said the decision should rest with the graduation committee.

“I think (the decision) should go back to the committee,” DePretis said. “I really don’t think we should be this heavily involved.”