Food fight: not who we are

To all who were affected, we want you to know that we are truly sorry for the food fight in the cafeteria. We recognize that to participate in or even to watch such an event should leave us ashamed. We are all ashamed.

What happened is not the WS that we want to be. We want to be a school where students and teachers have mutual respect for each other. We want to be a school proud for its friendly and caring community, for its people. We want to be a school known for the great things we do here, and not for a violent food fight. So as the students of WS, we would like to apologize.

To our special needs students, we want you to know that we feel extremely bad about what happened, and that we are very sorry. We know it was a difficult and scary experience for all of you and we regret that. We recognize that our school may not seem to be as friendly as a place anymore. We want you to know that that is not true. We want you to be included and to feel welcome. Please join us in the cafeteria, whenever you feel comfortable, so you can eat with us again.

To the cafeteria staff, we would like to apologize for what we put you through. We do not always show our appreciation for what you do for us, and to put you through such a senseless act was disrespectful and unfair. We want you all to know that we are extremely appreciative of all that you do. We are sorry that we treated you all with such disrespect.

To the custodians, we want you to know that we regret our actions and that we are sorry and ashamed that we left you with our mess to clean up late into the night. You do us an amazing service by providing us with a clean and healthy place where we can go to school, a service that all too often goes unappreciated. Thank you for all that you do. We hope that in time you can forgive us.

To students who were not involved, whether you were eating lunch and left covered in food, were taking an AP test and were evacuated for the fire alarm, or your class was interrupted, we apologize. Our school should be a place where we can learn, study and eat peacefully, and the acts committed by a few unfairly took those away. We are sorry that you had to be affected by the actions of a few.

To our staff and teachers, we want you to know that we are truly sorry for our actions. Each and every day you work to help us learn and to prepare us for a better future. And we feel horrible that we so blatantly disrespected you and all that you do for us. You have worked to teach us character values yet we have turned around and showed you the opposite. This was not fair to you in the slightest. We hope to learn and grow from this experience and to show you how much you are appreciated.

We have signed this letter as we wish to apologize to those who we hurt. But we have also signed this letter as a pledge to become a kinder, stronger community, one where we hope to never let anything like this ever happen again.

The Class of 2012