Let’s all take a moment to look back at our last assembly of the year that took place a few months ago. Students were crowd surfing, people were being covered in glitter against their will, a tire rolled out on the gym floor and part of the ceiling was left broken.

Yeah, everything that isn’t and shouldn’t be allowed to happen, happened. Which is why we all should learn from last year and understand what shouldn’t go down at this year’s assembly. I’ve gotten pretty good at creating reasonable lists (check out my advice to freshmen) so I decided to put together a guide for what not to do at Friday’s assembly.

1. Keep the tires on your car and the spare ones in your trunk. What’s the point of throwing a tire around? There is no school spirit in a tire. I mean if the tires were red, maybe…  But actually, it’s pretty dangerous throwing a tire around in the crowd and I’m pretty positive no one wants to get hit in the head or strangled, so let’s try to find some other outlets for school spirit. Maybe throw around some cheerios or donuts… Just kidding, throwing round things with holes in the middle (or throwing anything for that matter) should probably be avoided.

2. Leave the glitter for your Mother’s Day projects. I’m sure your mom will appreciate some sort of glitter project, but she won’t really appreciate you coming home from school after the assembly leaving a glitter trail on her floor. Also, let’s try and be a little more respectful to those who actually have to stay after school and clean up after all of us. It’s pretty rude to be throwing around glitter and not taking responsibility for it.

3. Save the toilet paper for the bathroom. I know, I know. Throwing toilet paper around the crowd is an assembly classic, but really, it just takes me back to the tire incident. It’s not like the toilet paper’s red or anything, so how in the world does this represent school spirit? And before anyone comments and says “we do it for fun,” if you honestly thinking throwing a roll of toilet paper around a crowd is fun, boy do we have a bigger problem on our hands.

4. Let’s try and avoid punching ceilings. I know it may be a little hard to control your urges to punch school ceilings/lockers/walls/etc. but let’s all try to find our inner zen after the assembly and exit the building as calmly as possible. Let’s avoid trampling people to get out of the gym quicker and avoid pushing, shoving, and all those sorts of things big crowds like to do. If any of you really feel like it’s going to be a problem controlling your school spirit, one, I’d like to applaud you for being able to have that much school spirit in the first place, and two, if you are really going to have this problem, I will personally go and find you one of those Niles West stress balls for you to squeeze and get all of your angry school spirit out… and that’s a promise.

5. Wanna crowd surf? Check out these concerts. But in all seriousness, crowd surfing is really dangerous at a school assembly. Not only does it endanger the surfer and the crowd, but it endangers the school in allowing us to have assemblies in the first place. Now I don’t really have a mechanism to help anyone soothe their urges to crowd surf besides a few words of advice: if you think that something you’re about to do might not be allowed, it probably isn’t allowed, so don’t do it.

Personally, I think it’s a pretty reasonable request for all of us to act like civilized human beings, and it’s all for our safety and well-being. Think about the Prom consequences last year before acting out against the rules. We definitely don’t want that to happen this year.