The stampede mentality

Chris Chiriboga, senior, looked behind him and saw a sea of red approaching.

He began to run as the wave pushed him along— down, down, down, until he landed on the court. This sea of red was, in reality, a sea of seniors.

On Oct. 6, Student Council held the annual fall Pepfest ending a week of Homecoming celebrations. But with this Pepfest came the annual revival of the Senior Class’ tradition to stampede the court during students’ dismissal back to class.

“Nothing really went through my head; it was just a crowd momentum doing it. It was just like a herd of sheep, I guess. I wasn’t really thinking too much,” Chiriboga said.

Austin Lehman, senior, had seen the stampede ever since his sophomore year, and as a senior, he understood the class’ sense of duty to stampede.

“As a sophomore, we just kinda watched and didn’t know what to expect, and then it happened. The same as junior year. So I guess we were just like, ‘This is a thing here.’ As a senior we felt that we had to continue the legacy,” Lehman said.

After experiencing the seniors’ stampede for the second year, Mr. Doug Bullinger, principal, expressed frustration due to the serious safety issues the stampede creates.

“Last year was my first year seeing it, and I heard that some of that had happened in the past, but I was a little bit taken aback last fall about it,” Bullinger said. “This year I was disappointed to see it happen again, despite the fact that we had an increased adult presence in the front, thinking that might dissuade people, but it did not.”

Reflecting on this year’s stampede, Bullinger noted that the force of seniors as a collective group makes intervention nearly impossible.

“Talking to our [Student Resource Officer], I asked him afterwards from a police perspective ‘What do you do when you have that many students pushing forward?’ And he said, ‘You just let them through, because if you were to hold people back or continue to push, then you have people getting trampled, so you have to let the floodgates go.’ So you can kind of hope that a presence helps to dissuade but at the same time if students decide to do it, they decide to do it,” Bullinger said.

After the initial stampede in the Lindbergh center, many students rushed to bathrooms throughout the school, causing more harm to students, teachers, and school property. This year, bathroom sinks and counters were destroyed, leaving the facility closed for days after.

“There was like 80 people crammed into a bathroom. I don’t understand it personally,” Bullinger said. “But, I think it’s just a mob mentality, you just get swept up in the action and energy and you’re like, ‘This seems right; everybody else is doing it. I’ll just join in on this,’ But it just takes a few people to say, ‘Nah, I think we should stop this.’”

In a Student Council meeting on Oct. 11, Ms. Kathleen Miller, Administration Secretary and co-adviser of HHS Student Council, spoke of the Senior Class’ responsibility in the damage caused after Pepfest.

“Students destroyed the countertops in the boys’ bathroom, which is about a $2,000 expense. Students jumped off the ledges in the Mall. Dangerous. Three students got hurt. It was bad. It was bad,” Miller said. “And when viewing the cameras, it was primarily led by seniors. And the seniors during the day were chanting ‘Eff the juniors.’  Totally unacceptable behavior. And it’s just not a good example of leadership with this year’s group of seniors.”