Some experiences

I wanted to share an experience from my old school, for students on the autism spectrum and "typically developing peers."

We would be having a "spirit" day when everyone would dress up in either the school colors or the colors of their favorite sports team. Sounds innocent enough, huh? That's all we had been told would be happening.
Of course on the afternoon of that day, the whole school was informed of a mandatory pep rally that everyone in the school must attend. This happened about ten minutes before the pep rally would begin. Attendance, as I said, was mandatory. Sudden spur-of-the moment deviation from normal routine-BAD ENOUGH FOR THIS POPULATION.
We arrived at the gym and tried to gather on top of the balcony overlooking the gym where people usually have the option to stand during assemblies. Please note that the "gym" was very small-the school used to be an athletic club and the "gym" had actually been a workout room. The whole school trying to squeeze inside the gym would literally be on top of each other. Again, not good for this population.
We were told that everyone MUST be sitting on the gym floor-the balcony was not an option. So here's the entire school, squashed together, I looked around and saw just how distressed many students are. It gets worse.
They then made the announcement that they were going to divide the gym into two; then they were going to have each side cheer...and SEE WHICH SIDE COULD BE LOUDER.
Sudden change of normal routine, crammed in a tiny room sitting nearly on top of other people, and now being asked for the whole room to scream as loud as they can.
This is a joke, right?
(The guy sitting next to me instantly hunched over and clapped his hands over his ears.)
Oh, plenty of people went along and did the cheer. But quite a few didn't. (I did not cheer; best as I could do to protest this ridiculous idea.) The teachers were jumping around the room, and whenever they saw someone with their hands over their ears, instead of taking them out of the room, they would get right in their face and go, "Hey! You know you need to cheer along!"
If anyone is wondering if this is a sick joke that I am posting, I actually wish that I could say that it was.
To do this to a bunch of people with sensory issues is sadistic. To this day I wonder what the motivation behind this "pep rally" was. I honestly wonder if it was a spur of the moment decision. (As I said, we were told that "spirit day" would be everyone wearing either the school colors or the colors of their favorite sports team. We had been told NOTHING about a pep rally until about five minutes before it started.)
Was it some kind of a test? To see how people would react? As I said, sudden change of normal routine, crammed into a small room with a bunch of other people that are being (forced more or less) to scream at the top of their lungs. It's too coincidental.
In a way, could they have been attempting to assert themselves over us? What we were told was, "Hardly anyone ever comes to the basketball games, so we're showing our support for the team!"
While of course I'm all for supporting the school's sports teams (I love to play basketball myself) could the actual reason why a lot of students don't come is because...hmmm...maybe because sports are LOUD and many cannot handle that?
While they claimed that this was to support the basketball team, the real attitude seemed to be "this is the way normal people act" "we're trying to get you ready for the real world" and "this is what you're going to have to get into if you're going to fit into this society."    
Alternative ways that they could have done this:
They could have at the VERY LEAST made the pep rally optional;
If they felt that the entire school MUST attend for some reason that I cannot imagine, they should of at least allowed people to stand on the balcony instead of cramming everyone together in the gym. (Did it ever occur to them that they could have done the cheering contest and seen whether the people in the gym or on the balcony could have been louder?! That actually makes more sense!)
Or perhaps the very best way of going about it:
Instead of a forced, moment's notice pep rally, a great thing that they could have done was maybe give the school a week or so before Spirit Day for any student that wanted to participate to come up with their own cheer for the sports teams...and announce a winner and runners-up on Spirit Day and have those cheers be used as official school cheers! Wow! Wouldn't that have been great! Not only could this have been the perfect opportunity to show off the creative talents that so many people on the autism spectrum have, but students would have gained a whole new sense of accomplishment and self-esteem if cheers that they wrote themselves were being used at the school's sporting events!
If only people could stop and think..."these people might not like this, but I bet a lot of them would love this!"
Not only that...maybe to hear the cheers that they and/or their friends wrote, more students then WOULD have started attending the basketball games!!!