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Photo by John Wagner

Photo by John Wagner

The Lathrop High graduation Friday night wasn’t so much a ceremony as it was a roast. The 90-minute ceremony was full of laughs and inside jokes aimed at classmates and faculty members.

Student speaker Tomas Hoppough got the ball rolling by telling his classmates and the large audience assembled at the Carlson Center that his speech was going to be resemble his love life in high school.

“Short, sweet and funny,” he said.

And it was. Hoppough proceeded to take teasing jabs at many of his classmates during his speech, as well as several teachers, three of whom “made me realize I do not know anything.”

Even when it seemed Hoppough was going to go straight, he couldn’t help himself.

“Turn and look at all your classmates,” Hoppough said, turning serious toward the end of his speech. “This is possibly one of the last moments we will all be in the same room, in the same building, in the same state, together.

“Now turn and look at your parents,” he said, motioning around the audience. “This is a major accomplishment that they’ve been a major part of, after all, and we owe them big time for the tuition money they’re going to be forking over.”

And so it went Friday night as 194 members of the Class of 2008 walked across the Carlson Center stage in their bright purple caps and gowns to the hoots and hollers of family and friends as they collected their diplomas.

“It’s been 13 long years, but today we’re the Purple Wave,” class president Emily Gray said to cheers from her classmates and the crowd at the start of the ceremony.

After Hoppough entertained his classmates and the crowd, it was math teacher Ted Riggs’ turn.

A self-proclaimed fan of Star Wars — “The greatest movie ever made,” as he put it — Riggs said being chosen as one of the faculty speakers made him feel like a Jedi warrior with the ability to use the Force, even though his attempt to use the Force a week earlier to retrieve the television remote control failed.

He told the students they could either be Jedi warriors and make good choices or they could be Darth Vaders and make bad choices, which could possibly lead them to the Dark Side, even though in the end, Darth Vader made the right choice to save the galaxy.

“The choices you make can have an impact on the rest of your life,” he said. “Try to make it a good one.

“May the Force be with you,” he said in closing.

Class clown William Zimmerman admitted he “wasn’t the most ideal student” in the class.

“My whole motto for high school was D for diploma,” he said.

If it wasn’t for his teachers saying, “I’m not going to let you do things your way,” Zimmerman said, he might not have received his diploma, at which point he asked his fellow classmates to give their teachers a round of applause.

There were some serious moments, too.

School district superintendent Nancy Wagner urged the class to “listen hard, continue to learn, do what you love and never give up.”

English teacher Michele Robinson praised the class for their “particularly strong-willed, independent minds,” which, she said, “basically means they hate to be told what to do.”

But in a changing world that is threatened by things like war, terrorism and global warming, it may be those independent minds that can make a difference.

“Think of new ways to run the world, turn apathy into energy, work to change what you don’t like or needs to be fixed,” she urged the class. “Use the fire and will in you to create what you want in life.”