Arrested for Cheering on Graduates at Graduation:
This is a few days old, but I haven't seen it mentioned around our corner of the blogosphere:
Hat tip: Don't Tase Me, Bro.
When school officials in Rock Hill, South Carolina, tell graduation ceremony crowds to hold their applause until the end, they mean it — Police arrested seven people after they were accused of loud cheering during the ceremonies.I think this is a classic slippery slope problem. Imagine you let people cheer at graduation. It seems innocuous at first. People get used to it; it feels good. But the next thing you know, they'll start cheering at sporting events. Then they'll add in concerts. Then they'll cheer on their favorite contestants when watching American Idol. Before you know it, people will start expressing great joy all the time. Let's face it: Graduations are the gateway cheering event. I'm glad the cops are taking this seriously.
Six people at Fort Mill High School's graduation were charged Saturday and a seventh at the graduation for York Comprehensive High School was charged Friday with disorderly conduct, authorities said. Police said the seven yelled after students' names were called.
I just thought they were going to escort me out," Jonathan Orr told The Herald of Rock Hill. "I had no idea they were going to put andcuffs on me and take me to jail."
Orr, 21, spent two hours in jail after he was arrested when he yelled for his cousin at York's commencement at the Winthrop University Coliseum.
Rock Hill police began patrolling commencements several years ago at the request of school districts who complained of increasing disruption. Those attending graduations are told they can be prosecuted for bad behavior and letters are sent home with students, said Rock Hill police spokesman Lt. Jerry Waldrop.
Hat tip: Don't Tase Me, Bro.
The main difference is at a concert or sporting event, the cheering is for the same discrete event (the audience is cheering the same play or the same song.)
At a graduation, you will have 4-10 audience members cheering for student 1, then an entirely different 4-10 cheering for student 2. Add to this the fact that it is somewhat the point that the parents get to hear the name of the graduate, so you would have to wait for group 1 to quiet down before announcing student 2.
However, please feel free to express "great joy all the time". I would recommend attending a classical music concert and standing and clapping for the entire event. Please let us know how that works out.
I think you're missing something important: The entire point of announcing names at graduation is to give the family of the graduate a window of time to cheer that graduate. The ceremony has no administrative function, as everyone graduates regardless of whether their names are called or whether they actually attend.
Now, it may mean that the school needs to slow down the graduation a little bit to give families more time to cheer; maybe the school is in more of a hurry to get the ceremony over with than it should be, and it slows them down a bit to all the names are heard. But that seems like a pretty minor problem given that the purpose of calling names is to give the family a time to cheer and the graduate a time to be cheered.
No one student gets their massive, raucous, and extended family to cheer lest the students who don't have a large family (if at all attending) to cheer for them feel sad and under appreciated. Save all cheers to the end when all cheers are blended into one loud cacophony.
Through cases like this arrest for graduation cheering -- or the arrest of elementary school kids for temper tantrums -- the police become inured to arresting people for behavior that might be inappropriate in the circumstances but certainly ought not be treated as a crime. So they exercise their authority where it's neither necessary nor proper. That's not good, not only because it's unjust in these particular cases, but also because it sets a terrible precedent.
Will a police officer willing to arrest students for cheering at graduation at the behest of public school officials refuse to arrest protesters unwelcome to those in power? Probably not. Or refuse to collect recently-banned firearms from law-abiding citizens? Probably not. Yet he should.
assuming of course-we get a not so smart prosecutor who decides this is worth prosecuting?
two words: colossally dumb.
i can't say whether the arrest was legal or not. i don't know what the statute says, or the case law in SC or whatever.
the arrest SOUNDS absurd.
whether or not it was technically valid - iow not a false arrest. it's still colossally dumb.
as usual, i don't trust the media reports in regards to being accurate and complete, so i'd like to read the PC cert. before making a conclusive judgment
but on the face of it, it sounds ridiculous.
-seems to me the only relevant provision is the or otherwise conducting himself in a disorderly or boisterous manner
if that is the issue-then its probably unconstitutionally overbroad as applied. (or even facially).
When my nieces (twins) graduated high school in 1998, their principal made the same request. The audience ignored the request and there was cheering after every student was named. The ceremony, due to these disruptions, ran almost an hour over the scheduled time.
It was not a pleasant experience and my nieces did not enjoy their graduation as much as I had enjoyed mine.
As attorneys, we sometimes forget that what may be perfectly legal may not be good manners. In life, good manners is the oil of civilized behavior while, in too many cases, legal absolutes is nothing but grit in the machinery.
When my nieces (twins) graduated high school in 1998, their principal made the same request. The audience ignored the request and there was cheering after every student was named. The ceremony, due to these disruptions, ran almost an hour over the scheduled time.
It was not a pleasant experience and my nieces did not enjoy their graduation as much as I had enjoyed mine.
As attorneys, we sometimes forget that what may be perfectly legal may not be good manners. In life, good manners is the oil of civilized behavior while, in too many cases, legal absolutes is nothing but grit in the machinery.
Sure, what's a little more grit in the machine? ;)
(On the substance, I hate that people won't hold their applause til the end at graduations, but ARRESTING someone for it? Yow).
Nowadays it seems like everyone gets cheered.
This kind of behavior bugs me as it:
1. Violates the request always made at the beginning of graduation ceremonies that applause be held to the end.
2. Makes the event longer than planned. My graduation was held in a concert hall/convention center--our gym could barely hold the student body--and there were other graduations immediately before and after ours.
3. Forms part of a general coarsening of public behavior. Whooping and hollering at a high school graduation just seems out of place.
4. Cheapens public applause by making it obligatory recognition granted those who have--brace yourself--managed not to flunk out of free and (for the most part) compulsory public education. What do we do to recognize someone who has done something heroic?
Maybe the arrests and criminal charges are a bit much. In particular, why these seven particular individuals?
My one factual question would be whether the cheerers "use[d] obscene or profane language."
Holding applause to the end indicated an "all for one and one for all" congratulatory signal.
If I recall correctly there were 7 arrested, taken to jail in handcuffs, fingerprinted and required to post bail. An attendee indicated that they only arrested those near the end of aisles, easily accessible, while those in the center were given a pass.
Also, I don't think the whole point of the ceremony is to give each section its own cheer platform. There are lots of folks who go to graduation knowing they won't be able to cheer for their loved one. The policy is known well in advance.
Now it could get interesting: After, say, half of the diplomas are handed out, suppose the kids with diplomas start cheering like mad for the kids in the second half of the class. What's a superintendent to do?
That's when they deploy the teargas and water cannons.
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
I actually like this idea less than arresting people. It's not the student's fault if his/her family members can't control themselves. Why make them sit through summer school?
That sort of cheering is rude, especially when the request is made to hold applause until the end. And I disagree with Prof. Kerr that the point of the ceremony is to give cheering sections for each student.
However, not everything that is rude should be illegal. Escorting them out of the event may have been justified; the arrests were excessive.
1) When is decorum enforceable? Can I cheer after every sentence in Professor Kerr's class (can I shout anti-gay slurs in college classes, the way I can outside of funerals? Can I should 'fuck' in a college class full of adults, given that I have the constitutional right to shout 'fuck' in a neighborhood full of children)? Anytime I want at a golf tournament? Tennis match? In a library? Can I scream outside of Professor Kerr's family funerals, with no limits? If I disobey (say, instructions to stop interrupting Herr Professor), can I/will I be arrested?
2) If decorum is enforceable, but arrests are not allowed, how, exactly, is decorum to be enforced? (maybe simply removal will do).
Both unanswered questions. I have the sneaking suspicion, though, that first amendment rights extend only so far as they don't discomfit law professors...
Mocking rubes is pretty easy. Putting yourself in the shoes of someone in a position of responsibility, with the job of enforcing particular behavior, and facing up to the choices available, is a bit more difficult.
Sk
Also, look at the definition of disorderly conduct, as posted by George Weiss. Definition (b) addresses the use of "fuck" and similar, which is, properly, more broad than non-profane speech. That may still be overbroad for my taste, but the use of vulgarities is treated differently, and there is no evidence at all that profane language was used in this case.
Our college ceremony has cheering, students sometimes dancing across the stage, name readers with enthusiasm, and even the Commencement band gets in the act adding grace notes when a music major crosses the stage. Everyone has a good time, the families feel like their students have been treated as important individuals (and not some kind of assembly line product), and we get done in less than two hours, even with special speakers and a performance.
Schools that feel they have to manage the time by squelching the audience are making up for their own incompetence in running a Commencement ceremony.
Hanged, drawn, and quartered seems better. Followed by lawyers who defend the right, nay duty to be rusdde.
Would you feel embarassed or proud if your boss made a big deal of the fact that you showed up on time for a meeting? That's probably how most of my peers felt when the received boisterous standing ovations for graduating from high school.
Add in the time savings and avoiding heat stroke, and I'd say asking people to refrain from applauding is reasonable. Arresting those that don't comply may be over the top, but kicking them out would have been fine. But what about those people that only care about seeing their friend/relative walk and then want to leave anyway? Ushering them to the exit may not be much of a deterrant.
In fact, you have to work pretty hard at being a lousy student to avoid graduating from high school.
About the only thing to cheer at a high school graduation is the damned thing coming to an end.
But I'm willing to suggest a compromise: why not let people cheer silently? You can stand, do a few fist pumps, a few discrete high fives with the folks around you. Just don't slow down the reading of the graduates' names.
The usual request for decorum was made and just as quckly ignored. Not only were members of the audience applauding their grad, they were yelling out their names (often as they appeared on stage, before their name was called)-- there was even a compressed-air horn or two blasting off at intervals.
Crowds at "rassling" matches are better behaved.
My partial solution -- only two tickets to the event. We brought both of my son's grandparents from out of town for the graduation, but I would have gladly had them stay home (or had them come for an after-ceremony party at our house)in exchange for a modicum of civility at the main event.
So, no, I don't have any problem with escorting people out -- to jail if necessary.
Fort Mill High School, where these events took place, has an enrollment of approximately 2100 based on the last report I could find:
< rel="nofollow" href="http://www.fort-mill.k12.sc.us/downloads/8C53893B882149FEA076B68CB9FD3390/Website%202006.pdf"Fort Mill Schools Annual Report
That suggests a senior (graduating) class of roughly 500 students.
That means if each students gets a small window of time to cheer, just twenty seconds for the name to be read and that student's family to cheer, simple math means the reading of the names at graduation will take more than 2.5 hours. It is thus unsurprising that the administration would want to prevent this.
A couple of other points: the families were explicitly warned beforehand that they would be arrested for cheering, etc.
Finally, Fort Mill is widely considered the best school system in the State of South Carolina. Fort Mill is just across the border from Charlotte, NC and many of the families in the district have parents that work in Charlotte and commute.
Cheering loudly for graduates is primarily a tradition in the Black community. In all the graduations I've been in, the Black graduates had the largest, loudest, and sometimes only cheers. Without reading the article, I'd guess those arrested were mostly Black.
Say what you will about propriety and racism, I think this, not decorum qua decorum, is the real reason for all aspects of the incident.
1. Simply ejecting the offending parties from the venue isn't a workable solution. Unlike sporting events, concerts, etc., most people who go to a graduation go because of an almost exclusive interest in 1 graduate (the person they're cheering for). The graduates care about each other and in some cases parents have some tertiary relationship with their kid's friends, but most of the people attending only care about their child/grandchild/sibling/etc. Kicking them out after they've seen their graduate walk across the stage is pointless.
2. As others have noted, we're not talking about small amounts of time here. Without knowing the specifics of this graduation, I note that the school is in South Carolina and has a graduating class of 500 people. That means one of three things is the case. Either (1) the school had to severely limit the number of people who could attend the graduation, (2) the school had to rent out some kind of arena (and was likely subject to time constraints due to a number of other high schools wanting to use the same space) or (3) the school had the graduation outside. Now, I don't know if you've ever been to South Carolina in early June, but it's hot. And muggy. And sitting outside in a black robe isn't a pleasant experience. Regardless, if the choice is between limiting attendees and limiting disruptive behavior, I'm glad the school decided to limit the latter.
3. As someone whose last name is well into the back half of the alphabet (without even accounting for the fact there aren't that many people whose names begin with X, Y or Z), I especially appreciate attempts to shorten the ceremony. People with names in the front half of the alphabet don't care. Their parents/grandparents/siblings can (and do) leave after their child's name has been read (despite the fact they're told not to and that it is rude to do so).
JB hit the nail on the head.
I don't care if people cheer or don't cheer at graduations, just as they long as they stay off their cellphones on the bus.
Students assembled in lecture hall just before class were noisily chit-chatting among themselves, as usual in lecture classes. At that institution students were typically more boisterous than most, and were known for occasionally cheering or even heckling professors.
Prof. walks to podium, and visibly assembles notes on the lectern, signalling the beginning of the class. Prof. begins to speak a few words loudly enough to be heard above the hubub, "Welcome to Introduction to Psychology..." Hubub continues.
Prof doesn't miss a beat, continues speaking, but lowers his voice to the point that only students in the first few rows have any chance of hearing him above the hubub. "We will be covering yadayada today. In preparation for the next class, read the material cited in the syllabus for mumblety... blah blah blah..."
Within seconds you could hear a pin drop in the hall, except for the professor's voice.
He then described what he had just done to quiet the hall. He had purposely lowered his voice to near inaudibility, to inconvenience those in the audience who wanted to hear what he was saying. Those inconvenienced did the work of quieting the hall.
For a graduation ceremony to proceed, the only people who really need to hear the names called are the graduates standing in line to receive diplomas. Even those people can be prompted by unobtrusive and perfectly appropriate hand signals and eye contact to move across the stage to receive diplomas on cue. The ceremony can proceed no matter what level of noise the audience makes.
The speaker needs only to proceed apace, and lower, not raise, his speaking volume.
After the first graduate has collected a diploma without interested guests in the audience hearing his name, disruptive cheering will begin to diminish. Every person in the audience who wants to hear his own son's or daughter's name called will be shushing the others who are making noise.
No policing will be necessary, except possibly for audience members not sober enough to respond to normal social cues from people around them.
Think of it as taking steps to invoke and channel the individual (and competing) self-interest of each audience member. If some game theorist will explain why that can't work, and why it really didn't work when I saw it demonstrated, I'll consider believing them instead of my own lying eyes and ears.
This is exactly right. What does the school care whether anybody else can hear the names (and thus come up with a rule and a police presence)?
Yes, it's for the students and their families - neither of whom want to sit for 3 and a half hours at a high school graduation.
You still haven't responded to any of the other critiques being raised, including the time and space constraints others have focused on.
I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not. Maybe the school actually wants the graduation ceremony to actually be enjoyable for the people who attend (other those few jackasses who choose to disrupt the event even after being specifically told not to)? Crazy, I know.
And anyone who denies there is a racial/cultural aspect to cheering of this kind (like shouting during movies), is denying reality.
They have a senior night a few nights before graduation (I did not attend) where various awards and presentations are made to the graduates. Its longer, more informal (people come and go as they please) and being held at night its more bearable from a comfort standpoint. If people want to cheer "Little Johnny's" scholarship to State U. they can do so (since it is an actual accomplishment, rather than just showing up).
The graduation ceremony was a bit more formal and even at 90 minutes was almost unbearable...middle of the day, 90+ degrees and humidity to boot. I literally marked-up my speech while waiting to give it knowing that the audience wasn't going to tolerate a long-winded talk. I have no idea how people would have tolerated a much longer ceremony, which would have happened if every graduate had its own cheering section.
Yes, we should determine the size of high schools based on what makes graduations run smoother, not what makes pedagogical sense. Is this a serious comment?
I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not. Maybe the school actually wants the graduation ceremony to actually be enjoyable for the people who attend
Right, because there's nothing more enjoyable than watching 500 names being read in silence. Talk about sarcasm!
How about a third option: turn the volume of the speakers up. Too simple?
Yes, too simple. If that worked, people would do it. I don't care how loud the speakers are, if there's a dozen people behind you cheering, you're not going to hear your kid's name.
Consider a high school graduating class of about 850 students. We've had the music, and the speeches, and the homilies, and the slide-and-music show, and now, an hour and a half into the program, we start the parade of kids up to the front.
Principal makes the "please, no cheering until we're done" request. It's a well-oiled machine at that point - it has to be with 850 kids - and so the kids are coming onto the stage from both sides, splitting them by rows, with two name-announcers, one on each side, making it somewhat out of true alphabetic order, so you couldn't just look at your alphabetical list and say "okay, four more until it's my little Hortense", "two more" - you had to hear the name called to know.
The high school class was probably about 75% white, 25% black. As each black kid's name was called, the raucous cheering and screaming began, and you usually ended up not being able to hear the next two names being called.
People were so ticked off, they started yelling "Shut Up!" in great, and expanding, numbers as the ceremony dragged on. The poor admins tried to skip a few beats when the screamers were at their peak, but that didn't help, as the screamers just screamed longer.
It was just incredibly rude and obnoxious, and transformed what had been a proud celebration into a tense, anger-filled, seemingly endless confrontation. The racial component of the division startled me - I hadn't expected that at all - and it was so stark, so pronounced of a division that it generated a significant number of thoughts centering on "so why do they think rules and agreements don't apply to them?" among the white parents.
Have 2,000 person high schools makes economic sense, but I seriously doubt it makes pedagogical sense. Did you miss the part about not having anything in common except birth years? In smaller high shcools the other people in your class are, well, classmates, as in you probably have had them in an actual class.
If you can't cheer for your graduate, what is the point of the graduation ceremony? And if anyone thinks that it's so important these things run on time and the important part is something other than cheering each graduate, then why not just skip the reading of names?
You will still see your graduate get his diploma. You will still get in all the speeches and whatnot, if that's what's important.
I think "no cheer" graduations are simply people going through the motions they've always gone through, trying to keep things quick and convenient with no regard for the actual purpose of the things they're doing.
What possible purpose could their be to make the family of graduate 367 sit through the reading of 385 other names if not for that special moment when there son or daughter's name is read aloud and they get to say, "I'm proud -- that's my child!" with a cheer?
There are many pedagogical reasons why larger schools are better than smaller schools, for example, diversity of courses offered, pooling of resources for expensive equipment and separation of students by ability, among others.
I'm not sure why you assign so much value to having all of the students be classmates. Some kids learn faster than others.
Regardless, of the list of considerations for how large a school should be, impact on graduation ceremonies ranks close to last.
I do not know if arrest is apporiate or constitutional or whatever, but this is one of those situations where people are arrested for acting like a jerk/dumbass/rude and it is hard for me to have that much sympathy for people who are at a formal event and asked politely to behave with basic civility and chose not to. And what a bad example to set for the graduates.
It is unfortunate but behavior like this has spread everywhere from formal settings like graduations to less formal ones like libraries (where I work) and movie theaters. The last time I went to the movies I had to move once because the people behind me would not stop talking and then the guy near me in my second seat had brought a freaking pair of those metal meditation balls that you clack in your hands. You could hear them a good thirty feet away. At least he stopped when I asked him to.
They key question here: Will people cheer at this graduation ceremony next year, especially if the speaker reminds them that last year a bunch of people got arrested for it?
That's the entire point. The cheering takes away from a moment where the parents are supposed to be able to be proud of their child, since the parents can't even hear their child's name read.
Because it's a lot easier to just enforce the rules than just let the jackasses do whatever they want?
I'll admit that I don't particularly understand this mindset. The rules are in place for the benefit of everyone so that graduations aren't intolerably long and so that everyone can hear their child's name read. I don't understand the narcissism of anyone who'd be willing to drown out another parent's child's name being read or, in the alternative, demand that nobody be allowed to have their name read. Maybe someone can explain it to me, because I just don't get it.
What people seem to be missing is that it's not the school districts that push these rules and their enforcement. It'd be easy enough for the school administrators to just continue reading the names even if people couldn't hear them or axe the reading of names altogether. It's the parents who complain when they can't hear little Johnny's name called or when the school suggests getting read of the reading altogether. The school is simply the one left to enforce the rules.
Never "skipping a beat" and lowering the volume in response to screamers negatively reinforces their behavior. When the screamers begin to miss hearing their own children's names called, they have two choices: shut up and listen, or keep screaming and miss hearing about their own children.
If they're sober, they'll catch on.
This does not seem like a helpful suggestion. Many/most people are making noise for a graduate after the name of their child is called; lowering the volume will have little effect, other than to make many nearby parents even more upset. Maybe you could clarify how this would actually work? Or are you assuming (incorrectly, I think) that many people are just randomly screaming throughout the ceremony regardless of who is on the stage?
I never suggested that the reason to limit the size of high schools was to make graduations more tolerable. I suggested it was a good metric for measuring when a high school is too big.
It is not uncommon in theatres or other public gatherings for the audience itself to persuade the few with ringing cellphones, noisy children, and the like, to pipe down. Likewise, those in the graduation audience can persuade the screamers to be quiet, if motivated to do so. Since the screamers can't hear their own children's names called either, they will have even more motivation to be quiet as well.
what utter rubbish. and fwiw, there is a lot of inconsistency here. otoh, there are claims that it is blacks who are much more likely to (due to cultural factors) engage in the shouting, screaming, loudness etc.)., and otoh it's the cops fault for seeing disorderly conduct in one race, and not the other.
iow, a difference in behavior is claimed between races, but the disparate treatment (which is alleged since we don't even KNOW if there is disparate treatment/results - it's just assumed her) is based on racism... riiiiiiiight
fwiw, there are all sorts of differences in culture that may (and often do) result in different levels of arrest/conviction, etc.
that doesn't imply disparate treatment at all.
the most obvious example is gender based.
men are far more likely to (for example) rob banks than women. it doesn't mean cops are sexist cause they tend to arrest men for bank robbery more often than women. under some people's theory, bank robbery laws would be sexist though, since they result in disparate results - men being arrested far more often than women
the logic is of course ABSURD, but when you replace gender with race, it makes sense to all the identity politix types.
personally, i skipped both high school and college graduation.
Why? It's totally unrelated to the question.
The Principal says, "Arrest them officer. They are being rude! Worse, they have disobeyed my command!"
And, "Arrest that one over there, picking his nose."
And, "That one using a salad fork for the main course
at the banquet last night needs to be taught a lesson in proper manners."
"These villains need to be punished to the fullest extent
of the law. No law prohibits rude behavior, you say? No matter. I am the Principal! They are being rude! These people are acting as if they are living in a free country. There is just too much freedom of speech going on around here. To the stocks with them all."
1) The people cheering have already heard the name they care about get called so they don't care about hearing other ones.
2) Other members of the audience also only care about one name so at any given time only those there to see someone near in alphabetical order to the last graduate really care about hearing so you won't get a mass shushing effect.
3) Unlike a college classroom where people often know each other at a graduation the families are strangers and most people will endure bad behavior in annoyed silence rather than try to shush someone in that situation.
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Yes, people are correct that this behavior can be annoying but an arrest? Is that really warranted? I mean the law is a blunt instrument that isn't designed to solve all social ills. It can be damn annoying if someone is eating with their mouth open in your line of sight at a restaurant or is cackling loudly on the bus but we shouldn't arrest people for that. Social disapproval is a much better choice.
If you want to stop this behavior try having the announcer ask the first graduate (using the microphone) whose family cheers if they are usually this poorly mannered. Everyone else will stay quite to avoid the embarrassment.
We shouldn't arrest people because school superintendents are too hesitant to actually call people on their inappropriate behavior. And if you were going to deal with this using police you shouldn't twist existing laws to fit your needs but go through the normal political process and get a law that lets police ticket people for cheering.
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Also as an earlier commenter noted some cultural subgroups (black culture?) are more into cheering. While this doesn't make this into some kind of racial issue it does suggest it's a simple cultural misunderstanding. The fact that the superintendent says not to cheer before the ceremony isn't enough to clear up the matter. After all we are all told to be quiet in the movie theater but it's still okay to loudly get into it at some theaters.
Given that it's everyone's graduation maybe we should consider letting the cheers happen. If not then we need to make it clear the warning isn't pro-forma by actually expressing social disapproval as I described above.
Your analogy isn't quite valid. In the case of gender both genders agree robbing banks should be illegal and generally agree on how severely it should be punished.
A much better analogy would be a law that made 'rudely hitting on someone or making unwanted sexual advances' a crime. In this case the law not only outlaws a behavior that one gender is more likely to engage in than another but does so in a way that puts men at risk for behavior they generally find reasonable (if say someone takes offense). Additionally it also has the feature that it suggests the law might be being enforced as a result of stereotyping, e.g., people tend to find men's sexual advances more threatening than those made by women.
The question isn't based on pure percentage but whether the enforcement stems from either an unfair rule (puts a group in jeopardy for their reasonable cultural practices) or it's enforcement stems from prejudice. Whether this is the case here or not I don't know but it's not as simple as you say.
Not breaking the pace of the ceremony is a different matter, and depends on a different audience member interest. It tells audience members that each graduate will parade across the stage and get a diploma just like all the rest, no matter how much interruption they attempt. If anything, that is a commonplace "show biz" approach. The show must go on.
I think that turning up the volume and slowing down the ceremony for the interruptors, is guaranteed to fail. It gives positive feedback to the interruptors. To try alternatives that give negative feedback and advance the ceremony apace costs absolutely nothing.
Brute force of arrests or tickets should be an absolute last resort. It's expensive, both financially and socially or politically. Maybe some people did come intending to interrupt. But nobody came to see police arresting or ticketing people in the audience. It's a graduation ceremony, not "performance art".