SENATOBIA, Miss. — The commencement ceremony last month for Senatobia High School, its graduating seniors dressed smartly in blue gowns, scarcely seemed like an event that would provoke multiple allegations of criminal conduct.

But at least three people are facing charges and the prospect of $500 fines and six-month jail terms after they were accused of cheering during the graduation ceremony, held at Northwest Mississippi Community College on May 21.

“We were instructed to remove anyone that cheered during the ceremony, which was done,” Zabe Davis, the chief of the campus police and a Senatobia High alumnus, said Wednesday. “And then Jay Foster, the superintendent, came and pressed charges against those people.”

The misdemeanor charges of disturbing the peace have pushed the residents of Senatobia, population about 8,000, into a discussion about order, gentility and appropriate punishment, all focused on the annual rites of finishing high school. Indeed, the Senatobia authorities are not the first in the United States to pursue charges in the wake of an outburst at a graduation ceremony, but such prosecutions are rare (there were news accounts, for example, of one in South Carolina in 2012).