School dances are a nice tradition. They aim to provide kids with a safe opportunity to interact offline with whatever sex they are attracted to, and they allow adults to have some measure of control over how far things will go. As many teenagers would otherwise spend all of their free time playing Halo or gossiping on Facebook, the necessity for appropriate social events seems more vital than ever.
A difficult age group
In high school, though, with 16 to 19 years old students who feel they should be given more and more control over their own lives, things have become difficult for the staff:
- too few rules, you will have drunk students stripping and humping all over the dance floor;
- too many rules, you will be resented for your paternalist, fascistic ways; kids will boycott your lame event to better voice nasty grievances afterwards—which might not be the best approach to motivate teachers to give up their free time so younglings can have fun.
At my school, we fought to keep alcohol and drugs out of the equation; our dances only attract 25% of the student body. Of the couple hundred who do show up, a dirty dozen still insists on rubbing against each other in ways that we, as educators, cannot condone, for we have a duty to reassure parents that their children will not engage in or witness inappropriate behaviours.
Yet we do little about those excessively familiar moves, firstly because no one wants to be that old grouch from Footloose, and secondly because those public displays of lustful enthusiasm are plainly consensual—by now the people who would intervene prefer to stay home rather than chaperone.
Too cool for school
Then there are those who, having smuggled them in their underwear, leave empty rum or vodka mini-bottles in the washrooms (they could easily drop them in garbage bins, but how tight would it be if our noses did not get rubbed in it?).
Oh, and we also (allegedly) have those who dip tampons in hard liquor before inserting them in sensitive areas of their bodies, where our private security people will never find.
The end result is that, try as we might, we will always have a few kids who will come out inebriated. As long as they don’t create havoc, starting fights or vomiting on their peers, they will likely get away with it, feeling all proud to have stuck it to the Man—that is us, the staff giving away our evening so our students can safely enjoy a fun event.
At least that was our attitude until last week, when it came to our attention that one very wasted kid was about to give a few of his friends a ride home, and that it took a sober, responsible girl with enough clout to speak up and prevent the potential wreckage. (Youth like her prove that we are not completely wasting our time with our mandatory grade 10 accident prevention workshop.)
Why gamble when you have nothing to win and much to lose?
So here are the facts we have to work with:
- too much grown-up intervention defies the purpose of creating a fun event, so we continually struggle with what is acceptable and what is not,
- a few students will always manage to get drunk or high,
- some of those will insist on driving afterward with three or four passengers tagging along,
- therefore, we cannot guarantee that all of our kids will always make it home safely.
The bottom-line is that our students have the ability and inclination to behave like college undergrads, but they are minors so we are legally and morally responsible for their well-being. Our town is small but we do have lawyers.
Which leaves us with one question: Why do we bother with school dances?
Fred Subra - I am interested in education, pop culture, photography, politics... life! I don't claim to be an expert on any of these topics, but I ...
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