(Long Island, NY) Two Long Island high schools cancelled their proms this year. Media reports said high school officials at Chaminade and Kellenberg high schools cited high costs and inappropriate partying as reasons for the cancellations.
On one hand, there is something to be said for standing against the prom tradition of teenage drinking; it’s illegal and a recipe for disaster. Combining teens, booze and transportation is never a good thing. These two high schools should be commended for refusing to endorse teenage drinking.
The flipside of the coin is that the schools left it up to the students to come up with alternatives to the prom concept. At first this might smack of a bit of administrative laziness, but in the end it seems that it was the best idea—give the teens a chance to come up with their own alternates to the old prom concept. After all, isn’t it time to let those dusty old traditions pass into history along with the Studebaker, sock hops, and hula-hoops?
Best of all, reports of the student compromise say that everybody seems happy with the alternatives suggested. This is a miracle all on its own, but so far the compromise seems to be accepted by both students and administrators alike. Chaminade and Kellenberg could be setting an example for other schools to follow by letting students come up with new ways to celebrate without the expense, the booze and even peer pressure issues that come with prom night.
What’s surprising to some is that after a tiny bit of internet research, it’s obvious that many high school students actually hate the idea of a prom in the first place. Wikipedia, that ever-growing storehouse of knowledge on the internet, has an entire page dedicated to the idea of the ‘anti-prom’. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-prom states that there is even a (jokey) national anti-prom campaign. A click on that link brings up a satire site called “Life: The Anti Prom”. Even hoary old punk rock kids from the 70s and 80s will recall either going to the “regular prom” dressed in their safety-pinned best (or worst) to annoy their peers, or boycotting the event altogether.
Herein lies the concept that proves to be the most baffling—suddenly the old ‘enemies’ of the cool kids, the punks, the unruly-but-fun-loving and the class clowns are in perfect agreement with the supposedly stodgy old principals and guidance counselors. It seems that those who disagreed, rebelled or thumbed their noses at prom have found sympathetic ears in the high school inner sanctums. How do the kids feel about THAT?
Bob Dylan once wrote that the times, they are-a-changin’. Too true. The old 60s battle cry used to be “never trust anyone over thirty”. Today we see that the kids and the adults are suddenly working together on the same side. It’s a strange world we live in. Some speculate that these two high schools could encourage others on Long Island to follow suit and do away with proms. If other schools do follow the examples of at Chaminade and Kellenber, they should only do so if the administrators are prepared to let students pick good alternatives in the same way. Otherwise, the plan will probably drive kids to find their own unsupervised fun. Wouldn’t it be preferable to have some kind of school event? Those who run Chaminade and Kellenber high schools rest easy in the knowledge that they have given their students some school-sanctioned fun, without having to put up with the booze-soaked shenanigans of proms past.
