Looks like I'm going to be the unpopular one in this thread.
News articles like this frequently go for the the sensational / ire provoking / "little guy got screwed over!" angle. It sells copy.
Many of you are acting like this incident happened in a total vacuum and the man's first response was to press charges. Most likely it has been an ongoing problem at graduations. I have attended graduations where there were people yelling and screaming for almost every single person who crossed the stage. It was not pleasant. And one was even worse because there were some assholes two rows behind us with an air horn they kept using and it was hurting the ears of my then still infant grandson.
These people are adults and were attending a ceremony they didn't host.
They were asked ahead of time to be polite and not yell and such during the ceremony.
A lot of people would have been videoing the ceremony and having people yell the whole time would be really annoying.
I'm glad they love their precious whoever but there is no reason they could not be polite like the rest of the audience who apparently did NOT yell and get thrown out and have charges pressed.
Next let's look at the actual charge involved. These people are not going to go to jail unless it is for blowing off a court warrant.
I could not find the ordinance for Senatobia, MS but typically such things involve a small fine similar to a ticket. For example in Memphis where this story was published in post 1 according to the
Shelby County Ordinences IF they are convicted they face a $50 fine. In my home town it would be something similar.
For petty stuff like this the court doesn't want to waste any time. They may be able to plead guilty on paper and never go to court or they may very briefly stand in front of a judge and say, "Yes sir I yelled at the assembly after I was asked not to". Either way they pay the court clerk 50 bucks (or some similar small fine) and it is a done deal.
Meanwhile, maybe next year people will save their yelling and cheering until the last person has crossed the stage. I don't personally think a brief yell out (if that's really what it was) is a big deal. I have also been to graduations where that happened and it wasn't a big deal. But I can also understand how as schools / size of graduating classes grow this becomes more of a problem. And at some events I attended it also slowed down the ceremony waiting for people to shut up so they could announce the next name. It really isn't that difficult to exercise some common courtesy for an hour. There is plenty of time to whoop and shout and go to dinner later.
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