<p>Almost the entirety of Phillips Exeter’s senior class annually engages in this tradition. A picture is always published in the local paper.</p>
<p>So what are the HS admins going to do, give them detention??</p>
<p>^Haha, congrats on your 7,000th post, barrons.</p>
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<p>idad, as you should well know if you’re reading those studies carefully (at least if you’re reading the same ones I am) they are done with cigarettes. I explained above some of the numerous reasons that cigarettes are more addictive than cigars. I think the number for cigarettes is of those who smoke 2 or more, 85% become long-term smokers. But that number is not applicable to cigars, and to my knowledge a study including cigars (and analyzing their rate in particular) has not been done.</p>
<p>They’re really not the same thing, and while I see where you’re coming from in general you’re doing yourself a disservice by being inaccurate.</p>
<p>“Almost the entirety of Phillips Exeter’s senior class annually engages in this tradition”</p>
<p>Loomis Chaffee Prep as well. Women included.</p>
<p>[Smoking</a> - Karen Hunter | Reader Representative](<a href=“http://blogs.courant.com/news_opinion_hunter/2006/06/smoking.html]Smoking”>http://blogs.courant.com/news_opinion_hunter/2006/06/smoking.html)</p>
<p>Boy, people want to turn everything into a Federal Case, (comments section of the Loomis article.) We are getting FAR too touchy as a society always looking for holding everyone to their idea of righteous behavior. There’s a good word for that–self-righteous.</p>
<p>“Boy, people want to turn everything into a Federal Case”</p>
<p>Imagine what it was like to be a parent of a woman graduate and have to dodge incoming flack.</p>
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<p>Not doing myself a disservice. I’m a former nicotine addict. I know how addictive it is and how difficult to kick.</p>
<p>I see no reason on the face of the earth to not discourage the use of nicotine (in any form) as much as humanly possible to high school and college students. The easiest cigarette, cigar, or chewing tobacco dose to refuse is the first one.</p>
<p>That may be true, but my point was that cigars are delivered by a different and less addictive pathway than cigarettes and that your point regarding addiction is less relevant. Especially less relevant since I would put a very large amount of money that all the graduation cigars in the world probably get no more than a tiny amount of kids hooked on nicotine. Really, there’s better things to worry about - even with tobacco, like actors smoking in movies.</p>
<p>Miss Porter’s - a graduation tradition!</p>
<p>It is a tradition that everybody smoke a cigar right after graduation.
We are in Connecticut in an “upperclass” location and I believe that may be a reason behind the tradition, for us anyways.
Graduation is usually held outside so it isnt as bad, however this year it is inside and they still smoked the cigars- causing the fire alarms to go off :-)</p>
<p>The senior class of my brother’s private boys’ school in Dallas would light up cigars on their way out of graduation. The graduates all wear black tuxedos with white dinner jackets, so I think they feel that the cigars reinforce the “Rat Pack” look and help mitigate the the “may I take your order, sir” look.</p>
<p>My son graduated from an all boys school in a class of 82 boys. They wear white dinner jackets with black tie at their commencement ceremony.</p>
<p>It is tradition that each class come up with something unique either when they get their diplomas or after commencement. His year they all had stuffed a one dollar bill in the palm of their hands which they handed to the President of the Board of Trustees when he shook their hands as he handed them their diplomas. The Board President that year was Ross Perot, Jr… :)</p>
<p>When they were dismissed as graduates, they all reached into the inside coat pockets and pulled out a cigar which they all lit on stage before proceeding off stage. They all had gone out and bought themselves a decent lighter (not a Bic throwaway) and decent cigar to commemorate the event. It was rather funny to watch. They class before them also donned sunglasses for the recessional but since the graduation is held outdoors at night the boys in his class decided not to try that one…plus it had already been done.</p>
<p>cross posted with aibarr;her brother graduated with my son…I got interrupted several times while typing it</p>
<p>Just.say.no.</p>
<p>This is an old thread, but I just want to say I love traditions! I always get sad when today’s uber-PCness gets in the way. Traditions become the folklore that one remembers more than anything else.</p>
<p>We’re in CT, very near Miss Porter’s School. As shelley14 mentioned above, it’s an annual tradition for the girls to light up after graduation – that, and something about jumping into a fountain??</p>
<p>S just graduated from Loomis Chaffee. There were a few guys with cigars – didn’t happen to see any of the girls. The guy who brought them ran out before S found him. IMO, this is definitely small potatoes, but everyone is entitled to their own opinion about what’s a big deal and what isn’t.</p>
<p>Oldest son graduated hs a few years ago (2000), public NJ. Seems like much of the class (including DS…I knew nothing about it till I saw him with the thing) had a cigar…after the ceremony, on the field, they (and I mean a very large number) all lit up…diplomas in hand, no one said anything. Don’t know if this still goes on. Since then, NJ has instituted no smoking in public places like restaurants, so I’m assuming this tradition may be on the way out</p>
<p>It seems to be quite common in some High Schools in Minnesota.</p>
<p>I can see why some people may have concerns with it, but I think on the whole it isn’t that big a deal.</p>
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<p>Get back to me after being addicted to nicotine for thirty or forty years and we’ll talk about whether “it’s that big a deal” or not.</p>
<p>You might be stunned at some of the research on teenagers and nicotine addiction. Putting any nicotine in your body for the first time, especially as a teenager, is playing with fire – a lifetime of fire. To be honest, it would be a lot less risky for the graduating seniors to sit around and shoot up heroin in celebration. It’s a lot less deadly than being a nicotine addict.</p>
<p>That’s the most absurd thing I have ever seen here. The probability of becoming a heavy smoker and dying young from a single graduation cigar approaches ZERO. Fooling with Heroin can lead to a much faster death with a far higher probability.</p>