Prom night, that iconic moment in the life of almost every American teenager, is under unprecedented scrutiny after a Long Island school cancelled its prom on the grounds it had become an overpriced ”orgy” of drugs, alcohol and sex.
Kellenberg Memorial High School’s decision to scrap an event it described as ”an exaggerated rite of passage that verges on decadence” is the culmination of decades of debauchery.
More than 70 years ago, the society wit, Dorothy Parker, reportedly observed that: ”If all the girls who attended the Yale prom were laid end to end, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.”
Since then, films from American Graffiti to American Pie have made prom night an emblem of excess. However, for Kellenberg, a private Catholic school in an affluent seaside suburb of New York, this spring’s prom was too ”bacchanalian” to bear, and the administrators circulated a letter to parents accusing them of connivance in the shenanigans and saying enough was enough.
”Over the years, parents have become more active in creating the ”prom experience” from personally signing for houses for a three-day drug/sex/alcohol bash, to mothers making motel reservations for their sons and daughters for after-prom get-togethers to fathers signing the contract for a … booze cruise … for an after-prom adventure,” the letter said.
”Some have expressed the view that it is better to lose one’s virginity and get drunk before going to college, so that parents are around to help.”
Brother Kenneth Hoagland, the headmaster, did not return a call seeking comment on Monday, but judging from the letter he appears to have been as upset about the extravagance as the sin.
”It is not primarily the sex/booze/drugs that surround this event… it is rather the flaunting of affluence, assuming exaggerated expenses, a pursuit of vanity for vanity’s sake — in a word, financial decadence,” he wrote.
This year, Kellenberg students put a $10 000 deposit down to rent a house in the Hamptons, an exclusive Long Island resort, for an after-prom party. For the prom itself, students spent up to $1 000 on dresses, dinner jackets, stretch limousines and elaborate books of photographs recording the big night.
”It’s a huge issue — the role of marketing of schools. Proms really are now completely commodified events,” said Amy Best, a sociologist and author of a book on the subject — Prom Night: Youth, Schools and Popular Culture.
The US prom industry is worth nearly $3-billion, spent by 20-million students and their parents each year, according to Your Prom, a specialist magazine dedicated to planning, enjoying and surviving the event.
”When you’re in high school, the prom is second only to graduation,” said Cortney Pritchard, who left school three years ago and now works for a website, perfectprom.com, organising events and marketing paraphernalia. ”It’s one of the last moments you’ll spend with your high school friends. It’s a freedom thing.”
It is not the first time a prom has been cancelled. In 1994, an Alabama school called it off in an attempt to curb interracial dating. But this is the first time that a school has balked at the rampant consumerism involved.
The cancellation has outraged Kellenberg’s pupils, and some plan to organise their own event. ”We’re not naïve,” the school’s headmaster told a local television station. ”Our letter is simply saying we’re not sponsoring an event that allows all this to happen.” – Guardian Unlimited Â