On Monday, Oct. 5, two seniors reluctantly strolled through the metal doors of MHS. This was the first time they had set foot on campus in 13 days.

“It felt like I dropped out of high school and Isaac and I were glad to be back at school,” Trent Pearson said. “It was a little awkward walking into school after this.”

Right before the second half of Sept. 22’s Powderpuff game, Pearson and Isaac Sabbagh botched a planned act: an act that won them $20 and 10 days of OSS.

As the senior Mystake boys settled back into their positions along the sideline and the senior and junior girls retook the field, Pearson, with his prideful Mustang mask in hand, and Sabbagh, clad in a green morph suit, charged onto the field.

Pearson scrambled for about 75 yards before he was taken down at the 25-yard line by Sophomore Principal Rick Regina. Sabbagh, inhibited by a green field of vision, tip-toed the junior girls’ sideline until he was chased down by social studies teacher Adam Starling and stopped by Principal Dr. Greg Mathison against the back fence of the stadium.

Pearson said he and Sabbagh weren’t scared or nervous about running on the field and being chased.

“It was more funny than anything,” he said. “I felt like I was in Scooby-Doo when they unmask the villain.”
He added that the two seniors both thought they were going to get away with it and even had a getaway car ready for their escape.
“We got a little cocky and started to jog,” he said. “By the time we started sprinting, it was too late.”

Pearson and Sabbagh both felt that their punishment of 10 days in Out-Of-School-Suspension and not being able to attend Homecoming should have been less.

“I think the punishment was a little extreme,” Pearson said. “I don’t know why they hand-cuffed me.”

In comparison to the Trivia Thursday incident when a student said profanities over a loud-speaker and received five days of OSS, Pearson felt that his punishment was unfairly decided.

“What we did was less severe,” he said. “It was clean fun.”

He added that his parents weren’t too angry about the incident, but they were more mad with the punishment of OSS. Sabbagh explained that both he and Pearson and their parents met with head administrators to discuss the suspension. It was concluded it would stay active for 10 days and no additional days were needed.

“We want to leave our mark on Marquette,” he said. “No one’s done anything like this since we were in eighth grade, so we have to keep the tradition going.”

Parent Frankie Meier was in the stands when Pearson and Sabbagh ran onto the field and felt that the event was harmless.
“It reminded me of when I was in high school,” she said. “I didn’t like the handcuffs. I thought that was way over the top. People are too politically correct these days.”

Dr. Mathison explained that his number one priority is the protection of students. In general terms, Mathison added that the administrators’ first reaction to significant disruptions is the safety around them.

“For instance, if we are talking about situation in which people are at a game, or school event, and doing things such as running through an event, or running on a field, to me and to our school and staff, my number one priority is the safety of our kids,” he said. “Some people say this is just harmless kids having fun. Well when you don’t know if it’s a student, if it’s an adult, you don’t know what their rationale is, you don’t know why they are on the field, you don’t know why they are doing what they’re doing, our first reaction is the safety around us.”

He said when it comes to school-wide discipline, disruptive conduct punishments are weighed based on how disruptive the incident was and how insubordinate the aggressors were.

“When you tell them to stop several times, from different people, and they continue, that is what I would consider gross insubordination,” he said.

Dr. Mathison said in an event where an administrator asks a student to stop, and if they listen, then the student’s punishment would reduce.

“First and foremost, my job is to ensure a safe environment for all the students, out of all the things that happens, we see in the news, we want to make sure that is paramount in our decisions,” he said. “Number two, we want to limit disruptions. We want to limit people from copying kids, or adults, from this in further events.”

Finally, Mathison explained that in situations where someone is unidentifiable, he personally can’t take the risk of it not being a student.

“If I don’t know who you are or what you are up to, and now you go and assault someone, and we just stood idly by, I can’t live with that,” he said. “An act of any student who is coming to purposely disrupt, school environment, insubordinate after being told to stop, and continuing on, we would react that way.”