A father has sparked outrage after interrupting his daughter’s graduation ceremony to prevent the high school’s superintendent from shaking her hand.
Matthew Eddy was accused of trying to ruin his daughter’s special moment when he stormed the stage to push aside Baraboo High School Superintendent Rainey Briggs on May 31.
A video from the incident shows Eddy’s daughter moving down the line of school district officials to shake their hands at the Wisconsin institution.
“That’s my daughter,” the 49-year-old father can be heard saying in the video as he shoved Superintendent Briggs.
A father was accused of ruining his daughter’s high school graduation by pushing the superintendent to prevent him from shaking her hand
Image credits: Inside Edition
“You better get up off me, man. Get away from me, bro,” Briggs replied.
Eddy was reportedly later heard saying, “I don’t want her touching him.”
Meanwhile, the graduate looked upset and embarrassed as she watched her father get escorted out of the building.
Eddy was charged with disorderly conduct. The superintendent filed for and was granted a temporary restraining order against him.
“I don’t want her touching him,” 49-year-old Matthew Eddy reportedly said during the incident
In his petition to the Dane County Court, Briggs described how Eddy “approached the stage quickly and put both of his hands on [him] to push [him] out of the way, stating, ‘You are not going to touch my f***ing daughter,’” according to a police report obtained by WMTV News.
He said he “created space” when the father was physically aggressive, but Eddy continued to “push and pry” at him in an incident that reportedly took place in front of one to two thousand people.
Officers reportedly determined that the push had been pre-planned. The parent told police he and his daughter “have had past issues with Rainey and dislike[d] him.”
The graduate looked upset and embarrassed as she watched her father get escorted out of the building
The report adds that Eddy “wanted to prevent Rainey from having the satisfaction of shaking” his child’s hand, “so he went onto the stage to prevent that from happening.”
Briggs told police he didn’t know who Eddy was and that he had never interacted with him before the incident.
The parent told police he and his daughter “have had past issues” with the superintendent and “dislike[d] him”
In a statement released following the incident, the school board stated that “no employee of the School District of Baraboo should fear for their physical safety when fulfilling their job duties or at any other time.
“That this adult felt emboldened to behave in this way in front of hundreds of students and other adults should deeply trouble us all; this type of behavior will not be tolerated.”
According to a News 3 Now report, some people claimed that the parent behaved that way “in protest of how the superintendent and the district handled bullying incidents related to his daughter.”
Watch the video below:
There has also been speculation about the incident being racially motivated, given that Eddy is white and Briggs was the only black individual on stage.
This isn’t the first time that Baraboo High School has made headlines. In 2018, a number of male senior students were photographed doing the one-armed Nazi salute during a prom photoshoot.
Lori Mueller, the school’s former superintendent, announced there would be no punishment for those in the photo, citing the First Amendment free-speech rights of the teens.
“What a horrible father to ruin this very special moment in his daughter’s life,” someone commented
