As we are again in the midst of the high school prom season it never ceases to amaze me that students think nothing of spending hundreds of dollars on an evening's outing.
dTC Proms are indeed special, and children going to proms should have a good time. However, when children and parents are spending as much as $100 an hour to rent a limousine, several hundred dollars on a prom dress (never to be worn again), $100 for a fancy meal at a restaurant and untold amounts for make-overs, flowers, prom tickets, pictures and other odds and ends, a venerable tradition is becoming a financial burden for all but a few students with wealthy parents or well-paying, after-school jobs.
Westminster High School's senior class has shown some
imagination, creativity and sensitivity in dealing with these escalating costs. Through activities organized during the past eight months, the students raised thousands of dollars and are using that money to reduce the costs of going the prom and to ensure that no student is denied the opportunity to attend.
This is certainly a step in the right direction.
A formal dance is part of growing up. A senior prom is a celebration of accomplishment -- finishing high school. For many students, it marks just the beginning of further accomplishments and celebrations of those achievements. For that reason alone, a senior prom should not just be another school dance.
A senior prom is also a chance to be showy, to look older and to act as an adult. (Proms also have become the occasions where students engage in adult behavior -- drinking being the most notable -- that usually leads to trouble. But that is another issue altogether.)
For boys, dressing in a tuxedo ensures that a prom is not just another date.
For girls, wearing an elegant prom dress with matching shoes and a fancy hairdo really helps boost the ego. Even girls who are insecure about their appearances look, and feel, radiant on prom night.
American high school proms have gone beyond just the dressing-up. Instead of being a special dance and the social highlight of the school year, contemporary proms have taken on an unwarranted grandiosity. They are held in hotels and country clubs. A meal at a fancy restaurant is de rigueur, as is transportation in a limousine.
Most students don't want to hold their proms in dowdy school gyms. Even with fancy decorations, it is hard to hide the reality that gyms were designed for phys ed classes, not fancy dances.
